The Adventures of Sonic Cartoon Pilot in full!

Speaking of Milton Knight, who I obtained that brilliant painting of Robotnik from recently, just this week he has provided a youtuber with the pilot episode, which we previously saw chunks of, and of which some scenes were inserted into an episode of the actual series. Being a pilot that was made to sell the cartoon idea to the execs, there is no music and a lot of dialog missing, but what you will see is some truly stunning animation unlike the final product, due to this being produced in-house in America rather than outsourced to Asia. That and the animators are none other than Milton Knight and Ed Love, who's animation carer goes all the way back to the 1930's at Disney. A (almost) complete credits list is featured in the video's description.

Other things you may notice are that one scene was used as the credits sequence in the series, Robotnik is voiced by Jim Cummings instead of Long John Baldry, and there are a lot more nods to the games, such as a scene set in Green/Emerald Hill zone complete with the iconic loop and Robotnik's ball and chain weapon. Oh, and the shot at 0:27 was recreated on the continue screen of Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine. There's even a Sonic Says scene at the end, which shows that that idea was there from the beginning. It's a real joy to watch, and it's just a shame the whole series couldn't look this good.

Retro Gamer Magazine Mag Cameo!

Well isn't this a pleasant surprise! The latest issue of Retro Gamer Magazine features a article about the Mega CD, and in the little section of web links Sega Memories gets a mention and a screencap! Fantastic! If anyone is walking in onto this blog from reading it up in the magazine say hello! :)

Robotnik Painting by Milton Knight

(Copy and paste from my personal blog, because it's relevant here too)

Well lookie here what showed up in the post today! A painting of Dr.Robotnik by Milton Knight that I purchased from him just last week! I bought a frame for it and it's currently sitting proud above my computer. He had three different pieces of art for sale on his website although I'm not sure if the other two are still available. Either way it's my first piece of original artwork by a professional animator (one who I've talked about on here many times before, mainly for his work on the 90's Sonic cartoon) so I'm happy. Oh yeah, and i contributed a little bit to his Robotnik Toy Chest page. :)

Here's a clip of the man sketching out a quick Robotnik for an extra on the American Sonic DVD. Look how expressive his drawing is in such a quick sketch!

Sonic the Hedgehog Retrospective from Gametap

Wow, what a day for great Sonic videos! Gametap has just now released a four part retrospective on Youtube on the history of Sonic, including new interviews with Naoto Ohshima and Yuji Naka, bringing up some facts about his inception we didn't even know about. Who would of thought Sonic's design has influences from Micheal Jackson, Santa Claus and Bill Clinton? It's simply a joy to watch (it's in HD too, if you go directly to the youtube page). The three other parts are below:

The Nostalgia Critic digs his teeth into the Sonic Cartoons

Oh boy, after the Nostalgia Critic did a video about the mario cartoon, I was hoping he may do one for the Sonic cartoons (The original two, Sonic X and Underground are null and void) and here it is! He rips the shit out of Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, particularly about how it doesn't make any sense, but loves SATAM to pieces. As much as I disagree on his AOSTH opinion (it was awesome because of how screwball it was!), it's a bloody entertaining video (as his vids always are, give his website a good hard look if you haven't already) so give it a watch already!

New Sega Themepark under Construction ...in Dubai

We all know about Segas theme park ventures over the years, including the still running Joypolis in Japan, Gameworks in America and the no longer existing Sega World parks in London and Australia. Well it looks like Sega hasn't given up on building brand new parks as they are now construing one called "Sega Republic" in a huge Mall in Dubai, of all places. Sonic Retro has the info:

"SEGA Republic, is a two-level, 76,000 square feet indoor theme park, featuring a diverse line-up of rides and amusements. It will be the first of its kind in the region, and will serve as a benchmark for future SEGA indoor theme park developments across the Middle East and North Africa region and the Indian Subcontinent. With zones themed to reflect the experiences on offer, from the thrill of the ‘Speed Zone’, the active ‘Sports Zone’, the major rides and simulators, and huge redemption zone."

Concept art of the 'Sonic Hopper'

"SEGA Republic offers visitors of all ages the opportunity to discover the worlds they wish to explore through a variety of themed zones: Wild Adventure Zone, Speed Zone, Cyberpop Zone, Sports Zone and the Redemption Zone. Near the entry, is ‘Sonic Hopper’ (pictured) a drop tower offering thrills for all age groups in a family-free-fall experience. The ‘Wild Adventure’ zone includes motion simulated rides with an extreme adventure theme such as ‘Wild Wing’ that allows visitors to experience a dramatic aerial tour of the countryside or also explore nature up-close on ‘Wild Jungle’. SEGA Republic® also features ‘Spin Gear’, a full-scale indoor horizontal spinning-coaster offering several surprise twists and turns. In the Sports Zone, visitors can enjoy games and rides based on real-world sports, such as the signature attraction, ‘Halfpipe Canyon’."

"Another large attraction at the SEGA Republic is the ‘Redemption Zone’, a themed arcade and gaming zone, where tickets can be won and redeemed for a large range of merchandise. SEGA Republic at The Dubai Mall is a fully-themed indoor environment and will be one of the largest of its kind in the region. From the roller coaster, to the ride simulators, and arcade games, from its redemption activities to the physical sports games, SEGA Republic will thrill all its visitors."

Along with this info, photos of the park currently in construction can be seen over at this thread on Theme Park Review. One photo shows a Robotnik styled coaster cart. All this park needs now is some bottomless pits and they could call it "Eggman land".

S.T.C Streets of Rage Comic Online

One thing I quite enjoyed about Sonic the Comic in it's early days was how there was stories based on a whole slew of Sega's most popular games at the time (and even a few based on third-party games from EA and Konami). One of the earliest to appear in Issue 7 was Streets of Rage, which went on to receive a three stories (one for each game I presume) and even a book collection.

This website called Geekenvy has some great Sega related articles and has also uploaded scans of the first Street of Rage story in all of its glory, written by Mark Miller and Illustrated by Peter Richardson. Considering the game's simplistic story and the fact that they could only get away with so much in a children's comic, they did a quality job on this.

If you want to download any of the S.T.C comics in their entirety, there is a complete archive over at a website called Tails.Kicks.Ass.net, though you have to sign up to download anything.

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..