Meanwhile at the Junkyards..

As you may now I write for a few other blogs other than this one. Ive been writing for the Dreamcast Junkyard for a good few years now and recently I joined the team other at the Saturn Junkyard too. This is nothing more than a plug for some articles I wrote recently at both of those in case you missed them, as they do relate to collecting Sega stuff too.

Firstly at the Saturn Junkyard as my first article for the blog, here's a whole bunch of photos of my Saturn collection. I've been buying a lot for this system lately since i got myself a white Japanese Saturn and the 4MB RAM cart that lets you play all those brillaint Capcom fighters. It far more up to date than this photo from a while back, anyway.

Then at the Dreamcast Junkyard I've displayed a bunch of photos of the Segagaga box set I recently got in the post, which contains a nice pin set of all the console logos and a rather sweet t-shirt design. The game is about as much Sega fan service as you'll ever see in one place. I'll be writing more about the game there soon.

Now you know why most posts around here end up being about Sonic merchandise!

Some odd Commercials to kill some brain cells

Can't say I've seen these before, but the first video above popped up on Destructoid and it's advertising the Mega Drive to the public of India, starring a rather bizarrely voiced Sonic invading a kid's TV to BLOW HIM AWAY with Sega. Sega Who? WRONG ANSWER.



Next up is a commercial for Sonic Spaghetti (of all things) and what could of possibly of been one of Sega's many rejected mega Drive add on ideas: a food can holder thing that transports food from the screen into your gob. Yeah..



Speaking of Sonic junk food, here is what I presume is just a short snippit of a commercial for Sonic 3 life savers, that or it's the shortest most confusing commercial ever. Blink and you'll miss it, which is hardly a bad thing as when you do see it you might not be able to sleep tonight.



Darn it, as I'm writing this article I keep finding more oddities I haven't seen before. Here's one for one of those terrible Sonic Tiger handhelds. I had a few of these, unfortunately. They were barely playable and made horrid noises. Sega put there name on a whole slew of these, from After Burner to Virtua Fighter and even a Virtua Cop one that had a little gun you point at it's screen. Some were slightly better than others, but that's not saying much. Still, they're quite collectable now so i might write an article about them one day.

No, really, Japan still likes Sega Pt. 2

One thing I didn’t mention in the previous article is there is actually more than one Sega Joypolis. I believe nowadays there are only three left open, but there used to be more. We actually encountered one of other the open ones elsewhere in our travels in the city Okayama. However, we didn’t give it a visit unfortunately due to our time in Okayama being cut short (thanks to a certain “closed” hostel, but I won’t get in to that).

So other than the Joypolis centres, what kind of Sega stuff did Japan hold? Well, actually, not all that much. However, there is a ridiculously prevalent chain of ‘Club Sega’ arcades throughout the entire country. Occasionally, they are titled ‘Sega Park’ or ‘Sega World’, but ‘Club Sega’ was definitely the more common of these titles. Usually, these were just your average Japanese arcade – dark, incredibly noisy, filled with smoke, weird but spectacular arcade machines and a bunch of angry looking people playing fighting games with ridiculous precision. Oh and lots of gambling. And I mean lots.

^ If you’re a nerd and find yourself in Tokyo, it is almost unquestionable that at some point you’ll end up in Akihabara, Tokyo’s ‘Electric Town’. This isn’t far from the station at all. I'm also a bad photographer.

Unsurprisingly, there are plenty of Club Sega’s dotted around Japan, which we stumbled upon frequently. However, most of them were pretty uncharacteristic. However, there was a slightly more unique one I stumbled upon in Fukuoka.

More after the jump..

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