French commercials! Why not?

Remember ages back when we showed you a European commercial that made the game Gear look as though it ran Mega Drive games? Well this commercial from France isn't quite in that leauge of false advertising but it's still a blatant lie. The ad is for Sonic Complication and features footage of Sonic 1, 2 and 3. Sonic 3 wasn't on this cart at all, it had Robotniks Mean Bean Machine as it's third game. Yeesh. The commercial uses clips from that 'Sonic the Ride' animation most of us saw for the first time on Sonic Jam, a collection that did have Sonic 3. Man there's been so many Sonic collections now it's hard to keep up.

Let's rewind a little to this commercial from France for Sonic 1. There's a few of these ads with some biker punk straight out of Fist of the North Star getting pummeled by random things (here's one for Moonwalker, and another for Revenge of Shinobi), but this one is most notable for the I presume beta footage of the game with some very odd differences like the first boss having a spinning red ball and a spring shooting out really far. I'm sure Sonic Retro already analyzed the hell out of this footage but for those who haven't seen it before it sure is bizarre.

I suspect both the previous and this slightly later campaign cost Sega Europe a lot of money, what with all the explosions and special effects. This one above kind of reminds me of the pretentious Sega launch ad we had in the UK, only this is for the Terminator and looks like it almost cost as much as the movie itself to make. Here's a similar one for that crappy Indiana Jones game, and another for Super Monaco GP.Throw tons of money into a commercial = make tons of money! That's the 90's Sega way! Didn't that tactic work out well? :S

Finally here's an ad of a doll being crushed by a over priced pointless pain to set up mushroom shaped lump called a Sega 32X. Oh, and the slogan for all these commercials translates out to 'Sega is stronger than you'. Probably because every commercial involves the player getting his arse kicked. I guess it's still not as obnoxious as the pissing contest Sega had against Nintendo in America..

Did i mention I just picked up a 32X recently, a well as a Pico? Oh wait, I've been a lazy bum and have been letting Barry do all the work around here recently, haven't I? :E

My Big Fat Sonic Comic Book Collection

Over the past week I had been on vacation in my home state of Minnesota. Whilst there I did a lot of things that are unrelated to this blog, however I did make it a point to find as many of my Sonic and SEGA collectibles that I could. I found a lot of goodies, and will be featuring them here at SEGA Memories over the next week. The first of these many posts will be of my Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Adventure Series) comic book collection. Let's have a look at these suckers!

First 4 Figures jump on the Super Sonic bandwagon

Remember First 4 Figures? Of course you do, they do those lovely Classic Sonic styled models that generally completely outclass most of the modern figures. As well as that, they do highly elaborate (and expensive) statues of characters, not least including one of Sonic. Well, now they're planning to release another large statue. No prizes for guessing who!

It looks rather fantastic really - the base is an especially nice touch (I'm assuming it's meant to represent Sonic 2's Death Egg). But unless you have $140 dollars spare, this is the epitome of a luxury purchase. For an extra $20, you can also get something a bit... brighter.

Whilst the price might be outrageous (these are rather high-end statues, after all), it's nice to see Super Sonic finally getting some merchandise based acknowledgement. Perhaps the next range of smaller models from F4F will include Super Sonic as well?

More information here and here.

ToyFare Magazine Reveals Upcoming SEGA Figures

Thanks to the good people at the Sonic Stadium forums, we've got some great news on upcoming figures that not only cover Sonic but also reveals two more IPs. The article also shows off the 3-inch Super Shadow and Super Sonic, who is finally not simply a yellow version of a regular Sonic figure. Jazwares product developer Joe Amaro revealed the following tidbits:

• Big, Froggy, Vector and Espio will be joining the 3-inch line
• More 'Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing' figures are to come including Amigo and Aiai, making this Amigo's first action figure appearance
• 'Sonic 4' figures are being considered (please give us a giant Egg Mobile)
• Jazwares hopes to bring fans both retro and current style Sonic figures

I hope we can expect more than two All-Stars figures. A Ryo motorcycle figure would be awesome!

So, there's a new Sonic Sticker Book out in the UK..

If you regular any of the Sonic fan sites you will have heard about this. It actually took me a while to track one down from a WHSmith because it turns out the stores all keep them behind the till because they reckon kids will steal them. Doesn't explain the piles and piles of football stickers all over the stores, but whatever. Basically if you're in the UK still looking for one ask at the till. Not in the UK? Ebay's your best bet.

(Left) 1994 Album (Right) 2010 Album. Like you needed to be told that.

But is the album even any good? I've only just bought one and some stickers today but we'll have a quick look, and unfairly compare it to an almost complete 1994 Sonic sticker book after the jump.

Sonic Watches: Time To Be Cool!

Direct from the parents comes another Sonic item found in the dark recesses of my old bedroom. Last time I showcased a box full of goodies, this time I only have a watch to share, but what a cool watch it is!

Ebay hunt: Early 90's Sonic UFO Catcher

Thought I'd start preserving photos of really nice Sega related things I've seen come and go on Ebay from time to time before the auction vanishes from the site. Recently I stumbled upon this beauty with a starting bid of £100. it sold last week for about £206, which is not a lot of money for a full scale arcade machine you'd never normally find in the UK. Had i been working on my dream of having my own personal arcade I would have been fighting for this, but alas that's a project I'd probably have to save for when I'm going through my mid life crisis many years from now.

Shenmonth: Shenhua Promo Figure

For those who don't follow all of the Sega Network blogs (you should, they're all awesome!), I recently kicked off a month long celebration of 'Shenmue' called Shenmonth. Catchy or stupid name: you be the judge. As a part of Shenmonth, I wanted to show off a recent aquisition of mine. The Shenmue Shenhua promo figure!

Sega Anime: Panzer Dragoon

So back in my teens I found out about the video 'Sonic: The Movie' being released here, which turned out to be a dub of the anime that I remember clips of from Sonic Jam on the Saturn. Soon after buying that I started to pick up lot of anime videos (yes, DVDs were about but VHS was still the most common format), and in my search for just about anything anime (most of which were rubbish but hilarious) I stumbled across another Sega game turned one-off anime: Panzer Dragoon.

Tiger's R-Zone, and the terrible Sega ports it brought.

Now we all remember how bad the Virtual Boy by Nintendo was right? It couldn't really be played in any practical manner, didn't have a lot of games and worse of all: made your eyes bleed after a couple minutes due to the horrific bright red on black graphics. Tiger Electronics, well known for their dodgy LCD handheld games (many of which were based on Sega games) during the same year of 1995 also had a crack at making horrid bright red games for a system they christened the R-Zone (and the later model the XPG). Horror continues after the jump.