Just at the end of the Sonic the Hedgehog 25th Anniversary Party, SEGA had one last surprise. This is Project Sonic 2017, a modern Sonic game being worked on by Sonic Team. It is coming to PS4, XBOX One, PC and NX Holiday 2017! Enjoy the trailer. Holiday 2017 is pretty far away, SEGA is all about quality now though. So the wait will be worth it most likely.
During the Sonic the Hedgehog 25th Anniversary Event in Japan, Sonic Team showed off some never before seen Sonic & Friends concept art prototypes. Some of these previously unreleased designs shows off early ideas for some very famous Sonic the Hedgehog characters. On this episode of SEGA News Bits, George and Barry have a look at each of the newly released Sonic the Hedgehog character designs and tell you their opinion.
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Sonic the Hedgehog’s 25th anniversary officially kicked off on June 23rd, which was of course the release date of the eponymous game that started it all. In this SEGA News Bits, George and Barry look back on 25 years of Sonic by spin dashing through all the main series Sonic Team developed console games. There are quite a few to get through, so consider this more of a SEGA News Smörgåsbord. Why are you still reading this? Click play and enjoy!
What are your favorite Sonic games? Let us know the comments below and like always thanks for watching! If you like our SEGA News Bits videos, make sure to subscribe to us on our YouTube channel.
During the Sonic the Hedgehog 25th Anniversary event over in Japan, Sonic Team presented early concepts for Sonic the Hedgehog and Friends. Some of the weirdest early prototypes included rabbit Sonic the Hedgehog, headband wearing Silver the Hedgehog and scarred up Shadow the Hedgehog. If you are a hedgehog, you started out with some weird designs.
Check out the concept art for Sonic the Hedgehog and Friends below. Tell us what you think of these early concept art prototypes and if they did right with the final designs. Of course, these are just more of the popular Sonic the Hedgehog and Friends designs as they didn’t show a lot of the more niche characters (Fang, please Sonic Team).
[Via NeoGAF]
The Sonic the Hedgehog 25th Anniversary event took place over in Tokyo, Japan yesterday and Sonic Team time lord Takashi Iizuka was there. At the event Takashi Iizuka finally announced ‘officially’ that a ‘new Sonic the Hedgehog game’ will be coming out next year.
While people are freaking out over not having a Sonic Team developed Sonic the Hedgehog game this year, I do want to stress that everyone wait for July 22nd, when the game will be shown off at the Sonic the Hedgehog 25th Anniversary party in San Diego, California. We will be there covering the event live and there will be a lot of surprises that will please fans of the blue blur. I guarantee it. I have seen some crazy conclusions fans have come up, so just relax it will all be shown in less than a month!
Sayonara, Sonic Runners. According to the Sonic Runners official site, the mobile experience from SEGA’s Sonic Team is coming to an end on July 27th, 2016. Released in late February last year, Sonic Runners made waves as being the first smart phone Sonic game to carry the Sonic Team label and seemingly be developed by members of Sonic Team themselves. Unfortunately, one year later it was revealed that SEGA Japan deemed the game a failure. While it was raking in over 30 million yen per month, it wasn’t enough to keep it afloat as SEGA has announced the game’s service will close on the aforementioned date of July 27th.
After this date, the game will no longer be playable at all as it relies on a mobile connection to the game’s servers to operate. There has been no word of an offline version being available. After the break, check out the full announcement.
Remember when Knuckles used to ride a pterodactyl? Remember that time Eggman was called “Kintobor”? And who could forget how Super Sonic was Sonic’s evil split personality? What’s that? You don’t remember? Well then, you’ve probably never seen Fleetway’s unique spin on the Sonic universe before.
Whether you’ve read it or not, most people are at least a little familiar with Archie’s long running comic series based on the blue blur. However, as a poor little English boy, I grew up with quite a different set of comics in my youth. In this installment of SEGA Memories, I look back on this unique moment in Sonic history.
There are typically three things that people associate with SEGA: Sonic the Hedgehog, consoles that never got to shine, and great music. SEGA has undoubtedly housed some of the most creative composers in the industry, making everything from sweeping, pseudo-orchestral soundscapes, to fast-paced, pumped-up techno. But the best composers don’t let their skill and talent end with their music.
Enter Tomoko Sasaki, best known to SEGA fans as the main composer of NiGHTS into Dreams…. Her sound, helped along by Naofumi Hataya and Fumie Kumatani, is what arguably sold NiGHTS‘ surreal dream worlds and energetic gameplay. It’s often considered one of the best soundtracks in SEGA history, let alone on the Saturn, but it was only Sasaki’s third composition. And even then, it wasn’t even the strangest thing she ever did.
The Model series of arcade hardware by Yu Suzuki in co-operation with Lockhead Martin, where the next step in the Sega arcade world. Virtua Fighter sold Sega Saturns in Japan.
In Part 1, we looked at Sega’s origins and their Japanese game development during the 80s. In Part 2 we turn our attention to the golden age, when Sega was fought in the console wars and arcades were in full-force globally. Throughout the 90s, Sega would really grow up and mature and have individual divisions, splitting into arcade and consumer software and product development. Many of the programmers, designers and planners of the 80s and earlier would become managers and producers of their own divisions.
Let’s start Part 2 off with the growth of their AM studios, which is short for Amusement Machine Research and Development.
Sonic Runners is going to be Sonic Team’s big Sonic the Hedgehog mobile developed game and SEGA has finally released the first teaser trailer. You can watch it above. The trailer basically goes through the history of Sonic Team developed Sonic games and starts off with a counter, counting down the years to 2015…
Something to note: The trailer only shows off the retro series and Sonic the Hedgehog 4 (if you count that as part of the retro series). Could this game be more influenced by older retro style Sonic games instead of the recent games?
SEGA also launched a site for the game which revealed that the game will be released in 2015 in Japan for free with premium items available. The game will be available for iPhone 4S and above, iPad 2 or later running iOS 7.0 or above. If you are on Android, you will have to be running OS 2.3 or later (Which means almost any Android phone released can play it.)
The site features an image of Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles running through Sonic Lost World‘s Windy Hill with Chao and the Mother Wisp from Sonic Colors DS floating above. Could the classic clips and Sonic 4 indicate that Sonic Team sees Sonic Runners as a successor to the originals, or hint toward a gameplay style? What’s with the Chao and Wisps?
UPDATE: An interview between Iizuka and Famitsu lists a end of February release for the game in Japan. From what we can understand from the interview, characters will run forward on their own and Eggman will make appearances during stages which there appears to be 50 of at first (if we are reading the translation correctly). Tails and Knuckles are also playable, but Sonic is the only character initially available. Famitsu also went hands-on with the game, mentioning a cutscene featuring Sonic, Tails, and Eggman. Jumping appears to vary based on where you tap on the screen, possibly indicating that you tap on enemies to homing attack. The Eggman boss battle appears to have Sonic throwing or knocking back Eggman’s projectiles to defeat him.
What are your thoughts?
Sonic Adventure was the best selling Dreamcast game of all time, so it’s no surprise that we would want to discuss the game on this week’s Round Table. The Sonic Adventure series had two main entries that were both on the SEGA Dreamcast, and both had a very different approach when it came to story and gameplay progression. As the series continued, SEGA took the blue blur in a various directions with titles like Sonic Heroes, Sonic Generations, Sonic Colors and the latest title Sonic Lost World. Despite the long gap between Sonic Adventure 2 and today, a very vocal group of fans still ask SEGA for a third entry in the series. The question we posed to our writers this week was would we want a Sonic Adventure 3? If so, what direction should the third entry take?
Like always you can tell us your own opinion on what direction Sonic Adventure 3 should take in the comment section.
The Source Filmmaker (SFM) is the movie-making tool created by Valve, it allows users to make movies inside the Source game engine. SFM is available for anyone to use and has powered some really creative short films.
Here is one such film I thought was worth sharing. The film is a recreation of the Sonic Adventure 2 ‘faker’ cut-scene where Sonic faces off against Shadow. It is incredibly well made and a joy to watch for any fan of the Adventure series. Check it out!
Update: Turns out that Iizuka didn’t say anything about Sonic Team’s next game in the 4Gamer interview. The quote below was taken from Softpedia’s article about the interview, in which the author likely speculated about their next Sonic game. It has been mentioned in previous interviews that Sonic Boom won’t replace the regular Sonic series, but nothing regarding what Sonic Team’s next game is like nor when it will be revealed. We at SEGAbits apologize for reporting on false info and wasting everyone’s time.
We already knew that Sonic Team was working on their own Sonic the Hedgehog and it was speculated that it would be shown off this year. Guess what? It seems that is correct. Below is from a interview with the Japanese website 4Gamer:
“At the moment, the core Sonic team at SEGA is working on a new title that will use the traditional look and mechanics of the series, which will get more details later during the year.
At the same time, Big Red Button, an entirely new studio, is working on a new version of the entire game universe, called Sonic Boom, which will use an entirely new aesthetic and is designed to accompany the delivery of a new range of toys and a new cartoon series.”
I wonder what Sonic Team considers ‘traditional’ seeing as how Sonic’s gameplay has changed a lot in the last 20 something years. Is two Sonic games this year too much?
Over the past few years the Sonic series has hit a bit of a renaissance, with Colours and Generations achieving relative success critically as well as commercially. Typically, just as this turnaround is achieved, the newest game shows signs of radical change to the 3D Sonic formula that had finally gained acceptance. Sonic Lost World’s new design is the kind of decision that means it’s always interesting to chat to Takashi Iizuka, the man at the top of Sonic Team today and the public face of the team. He’s always cheery and approachable, but you can never quite predict the answers you’ll get from him. Read on to find out Iizuka’s take on the limitations of Sonic’s previous 3D outings, what inspired the new design of Sonic Lost World and his view of differences between working in the USA and Japan!
There have been a lot of theories flying around online as to why Sonic Lost World is a Nintendo exclusive. Some say that Nintendo came to SEGA, offered them a pay check for exclusivity, and that before then the game was supposed to come out on all platforms. So what does Takashi Iizuka say when asked the question in the Official Nintendo Magazine?
“The Wii U hadn’t been revealed when development began for Sonic Lost World, so we were working on a PC version in order to see what kind of platformer we could make. Then, when we tried to think about which platform would be best for this game, we chose Nintendo.” – Takashi Iizuka, head of Sonic Team
So there you have it, straight from Takashi himself. Though, I assume people with their own theories will brush this off and say it isn’t true. If it is or isn’t true, who cares, Sonic Lost World is coming exclusively to Wii U (and 3DS) this fall. Though, I would really like a PC version to be released, that would mean it’s still ‘console exclusive’.