Sega Fanart Showcase: Badniks

While I'm in a badnik appreciation mood, it's about time i did another one of these fan art showcase things. The robot enemies in the classic games are one of the most underrated elements of the Sonic series, particularly now as Sega tend to only design about 4 robots for each game used in every single stage, whereas the old games had badniks unique to every zone. Sega really missed the boat in making the badniks a highly marketable part of the franchise as they were like the Pokemon of their time in a way, sort of. Anyway, here's to the metallic animals everyone loved to crash into! A lot of the fan art I found are 3d renders.

Attack! By Kamladolly

More after the jump..

The Sonic & Knuckles Mini Figures

You've seen most of these little Sonic toys scattered about in many of my photos here before, but I almost forgot that I have a bunch more of them boxed up in the loft, so I decided to dig them out and snap some photos of them. They are easily one of my favorite sets of Sonic toys from my childhood: I recall having two of all of them at one stage: these ones boxed to store away and another set to play with, and they were awesome. I don't even think Japan ever got a set with as many different characters in it as this, yet they were released near the tail end of the Sonic boom of '92-'94.

They were produced by Tomy, who had previously released quite a lot of Sonic toys in England like the Pinball machine, the Marble Quest tower thing, a remote control car, some spinning discs thing called the Cyclone and lot's more. sadly I don't own a lot of those anymore before they were bulky and got played to death, the Cyclone in particular of mine got wreaked. While those toys were mostly found in catalogs and department stores this figure set was quite hard to hunt down from my memory, eventually finding them in a small toy shop. I don't believe you see these very often anymore except four of the figures were re-released in a little Sega branded box-set that pops up on Ebay every so often (Smindas has them in his collection I believe).

Here's one of the boxes, of which I have 3 out of a total of 5, each containing 4 figures, which were always two characters and two badniks. The box is quite snazzy, matching that iconic logo that adorned the box of the game. Makes a chnage from the usual checkered designs, anyway.

More after the jump..

Hey Smindas! I've found your Knuckles clock!

Well lookie what I found by pure accident why browsing the net, it's none other than a blog post about a set of Japanese 'SegaSonic' clocks which include the Knuckles one that Smindas has as part of his collection. There is also clocks of Sonic, Tails, Amy Rose and Robotnik and they're all rather snazzy. Even the packaging has a hand drawn quality to it. They were apparently found on the Yahoo Japan auction site back in August. Maybe I should have a browse there sometime. I think iI would actually be willing to trade a bunch of my old British Sonic merchindise for some of the wonderful early 90's Japanese stuff.

The art on the box looks like it came directly from some of the early concept art. Wow.

Source (with more close up photos): Tina @ Animeish

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)!