SEGA Five: A Salute to the SEGA All-Stars Part 4

I can’t believe that four weeks have passed since we began this salute to the SEGA All-Stars appearing in Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed! Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 can be viewed at those handy links. If you’re all caught up with us, let me introduce you to our five All-Stars for this week: Ulala of Space Channel 5, Shadow of Shadow the Hedgehog (oh, and some franchise called Sonic the Hedgehog), Sonic’s not-quite girlfriend Amy Rose, Aiai’s wife MeeMee and our flagman of the game Ristar.

SEGA Five: A Salute to the SEGA All-Stars Part 2

Our Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed celebration continues with part 2 of our salute to the SEGA all-stars who will hit the track this November. In part 1 we featured Sonic, Vyse, NiGHTS, Gum and Amigo. This week, we take a look at more characters from the Sonic and Jet Set Radio franchises, keep the ball rolling with the star of Super Monkey Ball and we see the return of a certain iconic ninja. After the break, it’s an all out all-star salute!

SEGA Five: A Salute to the SEGA All-Stars Part 1

Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed is only a month away! In anticipation of the game’s release, we here at SEGAbits want to highlight the many All-Stars appearing in SEGA’s racing title. To do this, we’re kicking off a four week salute to the characters appearing in the game. Each week will focus on five SEGA All-Stars. We’ll share why we think these characters are important to SEGA’s history, and why we’re looking forward to racing as them. Let’s kick off part one with the first five, can you guess who they are?

A look at Mobius: The Complete Sonic Comic Encyclopedia

Archie has been publishing Sonic the Hedgehog comics since way back in 1992, making it the longest running video-game based comic ever. Now, to celebrate they will be releasing a complete Sonic comic encyclopedia entitled Sonic the Hedgehog: The Complete Sonic Comic Encyclopedia.

The book will be feature 192 pages of content in a 6×9 trade paperback book. This book will include exclusive information not yet revealed in comics as well as character and location information and much more about Sonic’s comic universe. The book will be out October 30th and will retail for $16.99. After the break, two sample pages from the book.

Archie giving away $50,000 dollars worth of stuff at NYCC

If you are a fan of Sonic’s Archie comic book series run, you will want to attend two panels they are having later this week at the New York Comic Con. The first panel is on Friday and the second one will be on Saturday. There is limited seating, so make sure you show up early if you want one of the cool gift bags.

How limited? Friday’s panel will seat 200 people and Saturday will seat only 100. Check out the source link for more information.

Just what are Stampii’s Sonic the Hedgehog digital trading cards?

Yesterday the SEGA Blog announced a series of Sonic the Hedgehog digital trading cards to be distributed by Stampii, a Madrid based digital trading card company. Per SEGA, the cards are digital trading cards that can be collected and viewed on a number of platforms including Mac, PC, iPhone, Android, Facebook and iPad. Social networking comes into play via referrals and card trading. SEGA also promises “challenges and promotions designed specifically for users as well as the chance to win new digital cards and official merchandise”. What SEGA does not mention is that only the first four packs are free, after that users will have to trade or spend money on new packs in order to complete their collection. Now before you cry foul at SEGA for making us spend money on digital things (the horror!), hear me out. In a day and a half I was able to complete a collection of cards at no cost. How? I’ll tell you after the break.

Today Reddit learned that the “SE-GA” voice at the start of the Sonic the Hedgehog took up 1/8 of the cartridge space

Did you know that the intro “SE-GA” chime that we all love took 1/8th of the cartridge space? If you are a regular here, you probably already knew this. If you visit Reddit’s /r/TIL subreddit you probably saw this post and now you are seeing my blog posts regarding that blog post. Inception.

So 1/8th of the space? Totally worth it.

The SEGA Five: Revisiting Green Hill Act 1

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In the Sonic universe there is nothing more iconic than the zone that started it all: Green Hill. Any and every SEGA and Sonic fan should know the look and layout of this zone, specifically the first act and even more specifically the first few moments experienced by players. I’m talking about the line of rings, followed by the platform with an item box above and a Motobug below, a Buzz Bomber enters from the right of the screen, passing a palm tree with a spring hidden inside. For many fans, this was their introduction to Sonic as a character and as a franchise. Sonic Team knew the importance of the first zone, as (according to the Sonic Jam strategy guide) it took the team six months to perfect the look and design of Green Hill. In the years that followed, the opening layout of Green Hill reappeared a number of times. In this week’s SEGA Five, I’ll look back on those times, noting the strengths, weaknesses and possible reasons for referencing the classic layout.

San-ei reveals new Sonic the Hedgehog plushes

Japanese company San-ei has revealed a new line of Sonic the Hedgehog plush dolls. They showed off 5 characters scaling from the blue blur himself to Knuckles, Amy, Tails, and SEGAbits favorite Shadow the Hedgehog.

A few years back the company put out similar plush dolls, but they say these will have improved patterns. According to the source San-ei is high quality when it comes to plush dolls. I wouldn’t know, I personally don’t own plush toys. Check out the product page here.

Sonic the Hedgehog joins the London Olympic games in a form of a tattoo


Nope, this story isn’t related to a Mario & Sonic title. An actual Olympic runner from Puerto Rico is such a Sonic the Hedgehog fan that he has the blue mascot tattooed on his arm. The tattoo has the young hedgehog in front of the Puerto Rican flag.

The man with the tattoo is named Javier Culson, who took home the bronze medal in the 400-meter hurdles at this year’s Olympics. He didn’t just get Sonic because he was a fast character, he is an actual fan. His name on twitter is “Culsonic”, so if your bored give him a shout out.

SEGA says Sonic the Hedgehog can be ‘the next Hello Kitty’

Now that SEGA has decided to focus on fewer titles, some of their bigger IPs like Sonic the Hedgehog will be getting more attention. What is in store for Sonic? It means signing up more third parties to make Sonic toys, clothing and other gear you might not need but will want to buy anyway.

“Sonic is a well-known character, but we’ve got a lot of room to grow in merchandising . We dream of Hello Kitty. We’re still far off from that but we can see that our profits are growing year on year in the US and Europe [on merchandising]. We’ve got a licensing team on the ground in the UK who are focusing on that and that team will expand. We’ve got a team in the US and which will also expand. We used to run it all out of Sega of Japan, but having people on the ground is making a big difference. We will always do the computer game but the merchandising is a very important aspect to Sonic.” – Jurgen Post, COO of SEGA Europe

In a way I’m glad that SEGA is putting their name out there more. I used to love going to stores and seeing Sonic the Hedgehog stuff everywhere. But then again, who wants to see everyone’s favorite blue blur get whored out? Who wants to see useless collector items like a ‘Sonic the Hedgehog chainsaw’? Funny that they also announced a Hello Kitty Sonic the Hedgehog themed doll a few nights ago.

 

Dorkly Bits – Sonic gets engaged


Here is one of those Dorkly Bits videos that people on the interweb seem to be into. In this one Sonic the Hedgehog gets engaged. I’m sure this is the first time something like this has happen, I mean, fan fiction writers take note.