SOS '10: The Swag

Instead of making a couple huge articles like last year, I'm going to be posting a bunch of shorter articles about last Saturday's brilliant Summer of Sonic convention. Safe to say they really outdid themselves this year. To kick off, here's what I brought back from there. A bit silly that I'm starting my coverage with the last photo I took but never mind!

So a bulk of it is from the goodie bag that was given away to the first few hundred entrants with tickets (people without tickets couldn't even get in until an hour or two after it opened! Sucks to be them I guess :E). My girlfriend also got a ticket just before the registration ended because she wanted to tag along even though she's not that big into Sonic (she enjoyed it though, so that's a relief lol) and when we entered from the HUGE queue we got the last bag! However they did have hundreds more of the highlight of the bag; the Metal Sonic figure, to give away to people that entered (tickets or not I believe) right through till about 4pm. More after the jump..

Summer of Sonic is imminent!

Summer of Sonic kicks off in The Pavilion, Shepherd's Bush, London this Saturday and you can expect to see coverage of the event throughout next week (providing I get time as I'm currently rather busy for this and next week) including plenty of photos and videos. For those not in the know, here's some of the excellent stuff to expect:

 Free Metal Sonic Toy!

Last year the freebie as we got in the door was a neat little Sonic art book, but this year they have really outdone themselves. The first 750 entrees with a ticket will be getting this yet to be released mini Metal Sonic figure from First4Figures! This is one of the three new 3" toys they will be releasing later this year to sit along side the Sonic, Knuckles and Tails ones they made last year. There will also be a box set of all six in the near future if you have not picked up the others yet. The other two new figurines consist of Super Sonic and Amy Rose!

Sonic 4 and Sonic Colours (Wii and DS) Playable!

Yep, not one but all three of the currently known upcoming Sonic releases will be there to test out! This includes the much awaited (and debated) Sonic 4 and both the DS and Wii versions of Sonic Colours, the next in the main line 3D Sonic games. I'm personally looking forward to trying both out: Colours looks like it's taking everything that worked in Unleashed and ditching all the annoying stuff to give us a simple fun new Sonic with no werehogs, no medal collecting and no need to endlessly boost everywhere! The DS version appears so far to be essentially Sonic Rush 3. Sonic 4 is well, Sonic the Hedgehog Number 4.

All-Stars Racing Tournament!

All-Stars was playable in an early form last year at SOS and since then the game has been released (and was awesome btw) and this year you can see if you can be hailed the All-Stars racing champion! I bet most people will be playing Alex Kidd, Ryo, Shadow....bascilly anyone on bikes. We shall see!

Crush 40 Performing!

Jun Senoue and his band are one of the major players in Sonic's musical history, producing the soundtracks to a large portion of the franchises existence, and at SOS this year we will get to hear them live, ask them questions in an interview and even a instrumental jam session with Jun at tea time! For me at least this sure beats seeing that Bentley Jones guy performing, who I'm not a fan of by any means (I'm trying to be polite here lol).

Nigel Dobbyn returns!

One of the leading artists from the UK Sonic the Comic, Dobbyn was at SOS last year selling many of his original artwork. Unsurprisingly most if not all of it sold out, so this year he will be selling newly drawn prints like this little beauty here (above)! He will be there like last year for a chat and to get whatever you like signed. The guy is a mega talented artist so even if you never read the comic you should check him out!

That (in my opinion) the highlights for this year, and there is bound to be more surprises too so if you're going to be there I might see you there (just look for this git on the left, above) and if not look forward to checking out our coverage! :)

Classic Sonic comics online for all to read!

Some recent developments in the Sonic fan community have lead to some rather brilliant content involving old Sonic comics. First off we have a website dedicated to bringing us translated scans of the rare Sonic Manga series that kicked off to advertise the first game and went on to feature lots of odd characters including early versions of Amy Rose and Charmy Bee, or all things.

A new page is being uploaded every day and while the translation can sometimes leave a bit to be desired (Did those badniks really just tell Sonic to f*ck off? MegaDora, really?), just the fact that someone has gone to the effort to hunt down these much sought after old Japanese comics and probably pay big money for them, and rather than keeping them to his greedy little self has scanned them for all to see with a translation too, is a rather honorable feat.The art in the comic is nice, and there are many things in it that originate from early Sonic concepts that got axed from the game, like the band of animals and the fact Sonic has fangs in some drawings amongst other things.

Next up is an even newer website that has popped up to give us a weekly dose of Sonic the Comic, the UK published series that was going from 1993 to 2001. You guys already know about my love for this comic seeing as i grew up with it, and there has been scans available online in the past of just about every issue (and fans have been keeping the comic going with the Online continuation), but this is a much more convenient way of just checking out the issues without having to download a torrent or something. An issue will be posted on the website every week and only one issue is up so far but especially if you have never read this comic before you should defiantly keep an eye on it every week.

What made Sonic the Comic so excellent in it's first few years was that it not only had stories about Sonic (which to be honest take about 10 issues to really get any good), but also stories about many other Sega games such as Shinobi, Streets of Rage, Golden Axe, Ecco and many, many more. Each issue also had news, previews, reviews and cheats for the latest Sega games at the time, so it was like a fortnightly mini-magazine as well. So make sure you check these two websites out on a regular basis if you want some Sonic and Sega comic strip goodness outside of the only still-running series that is the American Archie series.

Sonic Spinball @ Alton Towers

So this weekend me, my parents and my girlfriend spent the weekend up at Alton Towers, where we stayed in one of the hotels in the park, went out for some lovely pub dinners in the local village and larked about in the park and water park. But this is Sega Memories so let's get straight to the point: the Sonic Spinball ride. It opened this year, as did a Sonic themed hotel room (we didn't stay in that) and we had a go on it. Impressions and photos of the ride and the general Sonic-ness added to the park after the jump!

Classic Amy and co, all the way back from Vegas..

So my parents were in Las Vegas last month and visited the Gameworks arcade while there. Recently there was news that about half of these places were being shut down, but this is apparently not one of them, in fact they were building more stuff for it including a Sonic themed kids area. Alreday there was a Sega Shop full of Sonic goodies, they snapped a couple pics of the display (see above) Hit the jump for more...

More of my Sonic collection!

Another trip to my parents house meant another chance to rummage through boxes for more of my Sonic collection! Just like last time, it's a whole assortment of goodies from the early 90's through to today. Let's look, shall we?

Above you can see a collection of bubble gum containers. Sonic, in his classic pose, pops off the back of his head to reveal... nothing! He used to hold a bunch of little Chiclet-like bubble gum pieces, but I chewed those up years ago. The Game Gear bubble gum cases are very cool. Inside each container was a few sheets of pink gum (long gone) as well as an assortment of Game Gear and Genesis tricks and tips cards. From what I can tell, there were three sets: two collections of Game Gear tips and one collection of Sonic 3 and Knuckles tips.

More stuff after the break!

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!