Sunday 30 December 2007

My Sonic Collection is Morbidly Obese.

I got bored yesterday and decided to climb back into the loft and shuffle amongst all the Sonic stuff that is stored up there, and somehow it led to me dragging it all down to take photos of it all together, just to see how much of it I've ended up hoarding onto. There's a few things missing: mainly all the clothing, a bunch of badges and obviously the games, but you'll get the idea that I generally have a feck load of Sonic junk, ranging from toys and books to odd junk like shampoo bottles and an air freshener. I took quite a few photos because this lot took bloody ages to set up. Click to see them in big ol' detail.

Most of this stuff was purchased back when it came out, and after time stored away so it didn't clutter up the place. There is some of the modern Sonic stuff but I don't generally touch any of that mostly ugly Sonic X stuff. A lot of this stuff is nigh on impossible to find now, so I'm glad I kept a lot of it. When I got a lot of this stuff I bought two sets so I could have one packed away brand new and one set to play with. I'm such a geek. =D

Many more photos after the jump.

Tuesday 25 December 2007

Sega Fanart showcase: Christmas Special

(Bumped back to the top because I've added a new picture, and it's Christmas day! Whoo!)

In case it wasn't pretty darn obvious, Christmas is just around the corner, so here's some more artwork from the land of DeviantArt (that is the half of it that doesn't consist of creepy Sonic fetishes), this time with an Xmas theme. Now where's me snow?


Sonic - Light of Shining Stars by *mayshing

More after the jump..

Monday 24 December 2007

NEW Classic Sonic Plush toys! Whoo!

For the last year or so, you may of noticed a bunch of retro style Sonic merchandise being sold in GameStation, including T-Shirts, key rings, wrist bands, badges etc. Well just a couple days ago I was browsing in my local GAME, which being so close to Christmas was naturally packed with people running around like headless chickens because they leave their shopping till the very last minute, and I came across these new retro Sonic plush toys, one of Sonic and one of Tails. According to the back of the box there is also Knuckles and Dr. Eggman ones, but they didn't have these in stock. Best thing was they were only a tenner each, which isn't bad because there not too small and look the part.

Anyway, the queue was about a mile long so I didn't buy them then, but this morning I had another look and most of them had already sold, they only had 2 Sonics and about 5 tails' left, so that convinced me to grab one of each. While I have barely touched any of the modern Sonic X style stuff they have made over the last few years, I'm a sucker for anything that looks like the Sonic I grew up with.

More after the jump.

Saturday 22 December 2007

Streets of what? Streets of RAGE!

What, an article that isn’t about Sonic? No, I’m not high, I just felt like being different. Variety is the proverbial spice of life. When I think of the good old days of Sega, one of the first things that comes to mind (once that blue hedgehog gets out the way) is Streets of Rage – or Bare Knuckle if you live in Japan. Which you probably don’t. Now you could argue that SoR was a bit of a copy of Capcom’s Final Fight (which presumably to Sega's dismay, got ported to the SNES). Well, actually you’d be right. But what a glorious copy it was! 

^ And what happens when you fuse these two together? Street Fighter... see what I did there?

More after the jump.

Friday 21 December 2007

The Sonic cartoon that never was.

...and ain't you glad it wasn't? Just look at those awful supporting characters! 'Princess Acorn', presumbibly a early design for who later became Princess sally in the 'SATAM' cartoon, looks far too much like a slutty Princess Toadstool from the Mario Bros cartoons (also developed by DIC), Poker Lewis has been turned into some kind of punk, and Johnny Lightfoot also has shades, for some reason, and I don't even know what they were thinking with the others. A walrus called Joe Sushi? Tex the Penguin? A Flicky in some kind of white suit? Even Sonic himself doesn't look quite right, and where's Tails? More after the jump..

Thursday 20 December 2007

I got me art in Sonic the Comic, I did!

I promised I would work on scanning as much interesting stuff out of my Sonic the Comic collection (in 300dpi) as I could, so I made a start tonight. This particular scan below more a personal thing than anything, because it's a scan of when, as a lad of twelve, I got a piece of artwork I drew into the pages of the British Sonic comic, in issue 130 released May 1998, to be exact!
You see the comic had a section every issue called the 'Graphic Zone' which is basically a fancy name for a fan art section. Getting an image in there would win you a little Sonic watch of some sort (worth a tenner). I always liked how one of the optional fields next to your name was what Sega consoles you had. I'd like to think stating you owned a Playstation would have S.T.C send shit through your mailbox. At the time I had a Mega Drive II, Mega CD II, Sega Saturn and a Game Gear. Oh how I miss that battery eating lump of plastic. Why did I sell it off so I could get a Game Boy Colour?

It's not just the fact they printed my art, but they also gave it an entire half-page of space, plus this was for the comic's 5th anniversary so the art is featured in a rather special issue. I'm surprised they didn't give that picture below it the bigger page space though, as it's much nicer. maybe all the white on mine saved on ink. Anyway, here's the watch I won from them, which in all honesty I never wore: it just got packed away with all the other Sonic junk I've got sitting in the loft, still in it's package!

This wasn't the first or only time that I had won something in S.T.C, mind. One time I sent in some Sonic comics I scribbled up (it was pretty much all I did draw at the time, hundreds upon hundreds of Sonic comics), and in return they sent me a Sonic 2 jacket patch...which I don't have a photo of right now, but I'll go get one later and edit it into this post. There was also something else I won from them, but I'll leave that topic for another time..

Wednesday 19 December 2007

Sega World Videos!

There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of love for the old SegaWorld Indoor Park that used to be in London (now just one floor of arcade games called 'FunLand'), but at least there is Arcade Heroes, who back in October got their hands on some juicy SegaWorld videos! The first video they managed to lay their hands on was is a promotional video showing off all the 3D concept planning of the place, and a bunch of footage of the rides that were there which bring back vague but fond memories. It also shows brief clips of what appears to be a Pirate Sega commercial for Virtua Racing on the Mega Drive!

Videos after the jump.


Tuesday 18 December 2007

Memorable Moments in Sega Gaming 2

Continuing from where I left off quite a while ago, here's five more installments of my personal most memorable moments in my Sega filled life of gaming. You can see the previous chapter HERE.


#6: Sega Rally - The Instructors

Sega seem to always do things in a way that's makes them more memorable to me than say, games by just about anyone else. Take rally games, or more specifically the voice that instructs you on which turns are coming up in Sega Rally

“Long medium left! Easy Right! CAUTION! Hairpin right! Long easy right, Maybe!“

Maybe? Some help you are. Then as you go around the track a second time, it’s still a “
Long easy right! Maybe!”. Surely he can confirm now we’ve been round the track one lap what that part is. Moron. When you play the sequel with the female instructor, she sounds more like she’s saying “Long easy right! Baby!” Heh. Best part about this feature was making them shout “whoa!” every time you bump into the sides. That’ll teach them to be unsure about the next turn. Hang on, I’ve run out of time. Oh well. GAME OVER YEAHHHHHHHHHH!


More after the jump.

Thursday 13 December 2007

Today is Sega Saturn Day!

Why is today of all days Sega Saturn day? Because Father Krishna says so, that's why! His blog The Saturn Junkyard, has been up and running for a whole year today, and unlike this place it updates very often with great content like interviews with the creator of Radio Sega, and info all the latest remakes/ports of Saturn games to pop up in Japan a lot recently. He even has a little chat box thingy on the side of the blog, which is nice. I've drawn up a quick Segata Sanshiro in it's honor:

I still remember when I got my Saturn. I got it on my 10th Birthday in November 1996, if I remember correctly. This was probably the most Sega induced time of my life as soon after this Birthday me and some school mates went up to visit the newly opened SegaWorld (see the previous articles about that). It came from Argos and was £200 with a bunch of bundled games: Sega Rally, Manx TT Superbike, Sega Ages, Sonic Jam and Bubble Bobble Collection. I still remember soon after a mate telling me of a rumor that the Saturn could play Mega CD games, which I tried out and ended up having to get the system replaced! Doh!

Being a Sonic nut at the time (my birthday cake that year had Sonic Pogs sitting on it, for petes sake!), Sonic Jam was a dream come true: All 4 mega Drive titles, which had already given me hours upon hours of fun, all on one disc with lots of added options, modes, difficulty settings and best of all: a time attack feature. It was, and still is, the best collection of the original Sonic games ever made: far better than Mega Collection which was just a bunch of ROMs slapped on a disc.

Sega Ages also filled me with mountains of joy: finally I could play After Burner just like the cabinet they had down the theme park along the seaside at home. I didn't have any interest in the Playstation: as far as I was concerned it didn't have Sonic or any of Sega's arcade games which, living by a seafront full of arcades, were something I would alway want to blow my pocket money on, so owning them at home was just what I wanted.

This is my collection at the moment. Most of these games were bought back when the console was out, many of which were being flogged off as the Saturn was slowly fading from selves. Outside of Ebay the games are pretty hard to find now, but a few have popped up at Car Boot Sales from time to time, including Guardian Heroes, Street Fighter Collection and House of the Dead.

Oh, and make sure you check out the latest issue of Retro Gamer, it featured an article on one of the saturn's defining games NiGHTS, as well as a great article on the Official Sega Saturn magazine, all the issues I bought of which I still own and is my all time favorite game magazine.

Friday 23 November 2007

Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog on DVD



The time around 1993 to 1995 was huge for Sonic fans, including myself as a wee lad. Not only did they release a truck load of games for the many Sega systems out at the time, but you could buy Sonic as almost anything, even spaghetti! One of the biggest things to push Sonic into stardom in these early years was the release of not one, but two completely different TV cartoons, which appeared on the scene no more than a week between each other. Named 'Sonic the Hedgehog' and 'The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog', the two cartoons have are affectionately known as 'SATAM' (Saturday morning) and 'AOSTH' so as not to confuse their similar titles.

This was an in-genius idea on Sega's half; instead of going for one particular style of cartoon, risking the chance of losing half an audience, they had two series' produced that would appeal to different audiences, so Sonic could potentially appeal to any kid. SATAM went for a deep continuing story with a dark edge to it much like other favorites of the time like Gargoyles and Batman, whereas AOSTH was a more slapstick Looney Tunes like cartoon with lots of daft animation and gags.Both were developed by the same studio - DIC, known best for Inspector Gadget, and they made yet another Sonic cartoon in 1999 (just before the Dreamcast released in the west) called Sonic Underground, although to be honest I didn't like that much.


While I have a soft spot for SATAM, Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog is the cartoon I remember best from my childhood. This is mainly because in the UK most of the episodes were released on video, and I owned the lot of them. They also showed the two cartoons regulary on a channel called TCC (The Childrens Channel) where they would often get the intros and credits of teh cartoons muddled up sometimes, so you'd think they were about to air an episode of SATAM, but after the intro a AOSTH episode would pop up. Weird.
This is the one Sonic cartoon that seems to keep springing up on TV as well. It was most recently screened on ITV2 and a kids channel called POP.

I have wrote about this cartoon a few times before at my personal blog, mainly because a guy who worked on the series, and designed this cartoon's cone headed version of Dr.Robotnik, Milton Knight, has posted some wonderful concept art he did for it as well as some early footage on YouTube. Please make sure you check out all these blog posts HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE. Being a big fan of both Sonic and good animation in general gives the series a double interest to me even now, not just when I was a tyke.

Just this year both of these cartoons have been released on DVD, and this week I got my hands on the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog box set, which contains every single episode on 8 discs, a run time of 24 hours! The box set takes up the same space on a shelf of just one of the ten or more videos I had as a kid! Ain't technology wonderful?

The discs are packed in 4 extra thing DVD cases, 2 in each. One thing I can't congratulate them on is the lazy presentation. The box and discs use the same artwork of Sonic over and over again, and they haven't even drawn him well! For starters, his arms are blue rather than the skin tone they should be, and his shoes are all wonky looking at the bottom. Even the logo is squashed to buggery, and the back of the cases has artwork of the WRONG Robotink, it's the more menacing Robotink from SATAM rather than Milton Knight's crazy lard-arse. Compared to the wonderful presentation of the original videos this is just plain amateurish. There is a set of stickers in the box as well, again using artwork from the wrong cartoon. Doh!

The interactive menus on the discs themselves also leave a lot to be desired, with no extras and dull layouts. They also haven't really gone into any effort to re-master any of these cartoons, but these be honest it's hardly considered to be an important cartoon so it was obvious they were not going to bother. The company that has put this out have done the bare minimum but it's the content that counts in the end and there's a LOT of it. Some episodes are clearly better than others, but the cartoon is just as daft as I remember it, with it's surreal backdrops, occasionally great animation (again mainly thanks to Milton Knight's input) and plenty of laugh out load moments, wrapped up with a forced moral at the end of the episode. I'm sure you've all heard of the 'Sonic Sez' clip in which Sonic teaches kids about sexual harassment. In case you've never seen it, here is is!



The RRP of the set is about £35, and Play.com sells it for £28, but HMV.co.uk has this week been flogging the set off for just £13, so I naturally jumped at that bargain! It's still that price right now, so if you're interested now would be the time to go get it! They also do a DVD set in America that is only 4 discs of the 22 episodes, but has a few short extras that you can find on Youtube anyway. Oh, and it has nicer box art but that's about it.

Wednesday 24 October 2007

The Sega Logo Project

This video has been posted all over the place now, but I just can't not post this here. The Sega logo at the start of every Mega Drive game was possibly one of the main reasons the Sega brand became so well known. You ask any casual gamer who was raised in the 16-bit era, and they'll likely tell you they used to have "a Sega" rather than "a Mega Drive". Well this video has 143 different game intros of the Sega logo, even some from the Mega CD, 32X and Game Gear.

Almost all of them do something unique with it, ranging from tech demo like special effects to the game's main star interacting with it (with the best example being Vectorman, which actually let you control the character, jumping and shooting at it for as long as you please) and even some unique screams of the brand name (such as the Jurassic Park one with a T-Rex growling 'SEGUUUAHH!"). Some games even had more than one that would play at random each time you switch on the system (For example: Eternal Champions and Bonkers). These didn't just come from Sega's own games either, as all the third parties joined in on the trend too, giving the Mega Drive versions of multi format games something unique over the Super Nintendo or Amiga versions. This was in the days before consoles would have their own specific logo which would play every time you turn on the system. It's a real shame this individuality was lost to slapping a flat logo that sits on the screen for a few seconds with all the copyright details. Enjoy this wonderful display of what made Sega special in the early 90's.



Oh, and just in case there's a game within the video that you can't quite name, InfiniteContinues, the creator of the video has posted a entire list of the games featured.

P.S: There is also a website called Whip Ass Gaming who did a whole collection of animated GIFs of the Sega logos(many with the sounds too) which can be viewed HERE. Funnily enough both are called "The Sega Logo Project". How great (Sega Fanboy) minds think alike =)

Monday 22 October 2007

Sega Fanart showcase: Ristar

Considering Ristar only had the one game on the Mega Drive, there sure is a lot of nice fan art of the character floating around on DeviantArt (a majority of them are coming from one artist, mind you). The game itself was one of the true gems from Sega's 16-bit days, and one of the best platformers from that era.


Ristar by ~Izaart


More after the jump.

Saturday 13 October 2007

'Sega Gals' Capsule Figures

As many who know me may well know, I'm one of those sad gits that has a room littered with not only games, but toys of said games. I posted an article at the Dreamcast Junkyard a while back about a few of the Sega related ones I have, but just today I got four new ones sent through the post, as much as I have been trying to A) sell any figures I don't want anymore and B) stop buying the darn things because I'm running out of space. I couldn't resist these one though.

DSCF5874
DSCF5873
These are four of the 'Sega gals' series of little Capsule Toy figure type things. There is about 12 of them in total to collect, and this guy on Ebay had the lot of them, but to be honest I didn't recognize some of them because I don't play many RPG's (or any RPG's, for that matter), so I just bidded on the ones I know well. There was also one of Sarah from Virtua Fighter that I was gonna have but I got outbid on it, and the Golden Axe one was kind of tempting but it wasn't anything special. These were my four favorites.

More after the jump!

Friday 5 October 2007

Sega Fanart showcase: Alex Kidd

This week I'm gonna look into fan art of Alex Kidd, the Ex-Sega mascot and Master System favorite. Give us a new Alex Kidd game Sega! You know, if you're not too busy.


Alex In The Sun by ~igrec

Alex Kidd: Petit Copter by ~UpaUpa

Alex Kidd by *illeoh

Alex Kidd 2005 by *Sarumaru

Alex Kidd by ~lordwong

Antonis and Alex by ~devilove

Saturday 29 September 2007

SegaWorld Part 4.5

Okay, well, I haven't actually got any new information for you readers regarding the wondrous SegaWorld unfortunately. However, I did dig these up;
First, the weird SegaWorld Sonic pom /banner thing. Apparently there were several different designs, but I only have this one myself. It proudly rests, stuck to my CD rack.
This is the glorious badge I was trying to get from the broken badge machine dispensing thing. Well, I got given it by staff along with the pom above as a friendly bonus.
And this is a pin I didn't know I had. I don't actually remember getting it, but I will make sure not to lose it now. Something about it's nice and stylish, even though it's just a little SegaWorld logo. I couldn't find the SegaWorld pen I used to have, but it wasn't all that fantastic. It was just a clicky white pen with the above Sonic / SegaWorld logo. So there you go, those a few of the pointless items I've acquired in my Sega fandom.

Friday 28 September 2007

Sega Fanart showcase: Puyo Puyo

Searching throughout deviantArt for great fan art of Sega games, here are some particularly nice one I found. I'm gonna make this a weekly thing, starting this week with the theme being...Puyo Puyo, that long running puzzle blob series I love so much (and have just brought a Gashapon figure of it's lead character Arle just this morning). I'm mainly counting the classic series, because as much as I enjoyed Puyo Puyo Fever I preferred the old cast of characters =)


Puyo Puyo SUN by ~pu

More after the jump..


Tuesday 25 September 2007

Decap Attack

(two heads aren't always better than one - drawing courtesy of me)

In the interest of variation, I’m going to not focus this entry on Sonic stuff. Wild, I know. SEGA had many other glorious moments, some of which are often overlooked. One of my personal favourites would have to be Decap Attack, originally an annoyingly tricky Mega Drive platformer. Apparently an “update” of a Master System game called Psycho Fox, Decap Attack involved you running around as a zombie / mummy hybrid thing by the name of Chuck D. Head, in an attempt to stop Max D. Cap from doing evil things. Or something, I didn’t really pay all that much attention to the plot.

(I never understood the presence of the monkey on this cover)


More after the jump..

Sunday 23 September 2007

SegaWorld Part 4

Clearly SegaWorld was something extremely important to Sega fans. And by Sega fans, I mean Sonic freaks like Gagaman and myself. As such, I feel it’s only appropriate for me to write about this glorious place in my first entry for this blog.


I actually lived in London whilst SegaWorld was up and running, which meant I got to visit it a good handful of times, which was great for me. However, I’m pretty sure these trips were about 7-9 years ago, so a lot of the details are hazy, but whatever – I can remember a few things.

Pirate TV: Best Sega Europe Ad-campaign ever.

A La Kat Food? Ecco Washing Powder? The Cyber Razor Cut? What the bloody hell am I talking about?


(Click for a news snippet out of...where else? Sonic the Comic. Issue 2, to be precise.)

More after the jump..

Saturday 22 September 2007

The British Sonic Single that couldn't.

I remember there being, back about 1992, two Nintendo related singles that were somehow doing pretty well in the charts (they were in the top 10 for a week or two), one was some odd Tetris remix, and the other was a tune from Super Mario Land on the Game Boy with rapping all over it (ugh). I presume someone at Sega demanded that they jumped onto the band wagon, and not long later a Sonic single popped up out of no where.

The track uses music and samples from the first Mega Drive game, which is nice, but is ruined by some shite lyrical work and naff 90's beats. Unlike the Nintendo tracks this single didn't fare too well, only reaching the No.33 spot. When you hear it you'll pretty much see why. It did somehow manage to stay in the top 40 for six weeks, though. I only know this because when I came across the single at a car boot sale some years after it's release (I didn't even know of it when it came out in 1992) I looked it up in a Record Guide book my dad had. Somehow I managed to find both the CD and Record versions of it, which are still sitting in the loft amongst all the Sonic the Comics and other Sonic junk. Here's a close up of the back, for those who may want to know who made it (yes, both of you). The writer is unknown, apparently. Probably a sign that the guy who did write it isn't too proud of the fact.
Now I know you all really want to hear this, so here's a download of it! I did warn you though!


Edit: Found a youtube video of it.


Tuesday 18 September 2007

Sonic the Comic Online!


If you're British and grew up on Sonic, there's a good chance you remember Sonic the Comic. Published by Fleetway, the comic was running for 224 issues between 1993 and 2002 every fortnight. It eventually died out when the company publishing the comic decided to reprint old stories, believing that the audience it once had grew up and left. The comic had a big part in Sonic's popularity in the UK in the early 90's and featured many great stories based on the games, as well as stories based on other Sega games like Streets of rage, Decap Attack, Golden Axe, Wonder Boy, Ecco and more. The comic also doubled as a sort of Sega mini-magazine for kids, with news, reviews, cheats and the weekly sales charts for Sega's many consoles.

More after the jump..

Why Sega and Nintendo should collaborate more.



Wow, if there is one thing Sega knows how to do well still, it's making exciting trailers that really pump you up for their upcoming games. Just recently we had a new trailer for NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams and just yesterday the second trailer for Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, which can be seen above.

If you've found this blog you were probably around for the "16-Bit War" between Sega's Mega Drive and the Super Nintendo, and knowing what the relationship between two companies at the time was, finds this new Wii and DS title to be the most unexpected team up in video game history. Back in the early 90's Nintendo and Sega were seen as bitter rivals, who would constantly slag each other off in their respective commercials, "Sega does what Nintendon't" being the most familiar of these.

As a kid I was on the Sega side and my best mate was on the Nintendo side, but we didn't fight over who was best, we used it as an opportunity to play both systems without having to own them both. I would pop over to his house to play Super Mario World, Yoshi's Island and Donkey Kong Country, and he would visit mine to play Sonic 3, Streets of Rage and Golden Axe. This way we got to see the best of both.

I still remember reading magazines like Sega Power and Mean Machines Sega and getting to the fan art section in which you would be greeted to artwork of Sonic brutally killing Mario in sometimes rather inventive fashion, and this wasn't just going on amongst the "violent loving" Sega fans, as flicking through a Nintendo magazine would bring up the complete reverse. I don't have any of these magazines anymore, but you can probably use your imagination.

Once Sega were out of the console business, they started to insert their fingers into all sorts of pies in an aim to become the world's number one video game publisher. For a short while, Sonic was to be exclusive to Nintendo systems, starting with Sonic Advance on the Game Boy Advance and ports of the Dreamcast Adventure titles on the Gamecube. This soon ended when Sega saw that it would make more sense to sell Sonic on everything, but just seeing Sonic on a Nintendo console was something we could have never guessed would happen back in the 16-bit days, let alone Sonic and Mario starring in a game together like we have now.

Sega's first collaboration with Nintendo was the Gamecube and Arcade title F-Zero AX/GX. This was a match made in heaven: Nintendo passed on their long running F-Zero racing series, which debuted as a launch title for the SNES,
to Sega's Amusement Vision, who were known for Daytona USA of all things. Sega are known by many as the kings of arcade style racing games, and here they were working on a classic Nintendo franchise. Developed with the same engine as Super Monkey Ball (a stroke of genius if ever there was one), the game turned out be like a futuristic Daytona, with instantly additive gameplay and a sprinkle of Sega arcade magic. Simply put, the results were wonderful.

This is why I believe Sega and Nintendo need to collaborate with each other more. The two studios have their own ways of running things and their own disciplines, and I think when they work together something magic happens. It's just like when Warner Brothers and Disney decided to team up on the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and got Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse on the screen at the same time. It just worked so well, and I think the two could learn a lot from each other.

For example: It's no secret that Sega has been struggling to find the right direction to take the Sonic series in recent years. Mario & Sonic is being developed by Sega, but supervised by Shigeru Miyamoto, who you should all know is the creative mind behind Mario, amongst many other Nintendo characters. Even Nintendo's own Mario sports series doesn't normally get Miyamoto's attention (they are mostly developed by outside developers), which means he clearly wants this game to as good as it deserves to be. Miyamoto is known to only let games he works on out of the door once they are as good as they can possibly be, as seen with all the delays that went into Zelda: Twilight Princess. Where I think Sega has been going wrong is by sticking so closey to their originally planned release dates. With another year of development, Sonic the Hedgehog on the 360 and Playstation 3 could of been much, much better game, but what we go was rushed mess full of half baked ideas and sloppy programming.


The newly formed Nintendo Tokyo EAD development studio started their production line with the Gamecube bongo based game Donkey Kong Jungle Beat. Maybe it's just me, but this game really felt like a Sega game.maybe it was the simple yet deep control and combo set up, and arcade style game play. Currently this team is working on Super Mario Galaxy, and personally, I think these guys would do a mighty fine job developing a Sonic game. Just imagine the kind of imaginative gameplay these guys could bring to the Sonic series, while also going back to the series' roots which, to be honest, seem to have been forgotten in some of the recent Sonic games. The Nintendo mentality of not putting a game out until it's really ready could really benefit Sega's projects.

At the same time, Nintendo have been struggling to get the Starfox franchise back into gear. Starfox Adventures ended up as a bad move, and the Namco developed Starfox games of recent did nothing to bring the series back to the glory days of the SNES and N64 titles. This is where I think Sega could help. They could get the guys that developed After Burner Climax on this and give us a engaging, exciting Starfox game that we haven't had in a long time, with that Sega arcade magic sprinkled on.

So come on Sega and Nintendo. You've shown you can work together well...let's see more of it!

Monday 17 September 2007

Educational Outrun and False Advertising



That's right, not only is OutRun one of the best racing games ever created, but it can teach kids not to drink and drive, as this brilliant 80's educational short illustrates, posted at Youtube by Strange Findings, an account set up as part of robotkid.com. I recall seeing this on TV of all places when I as a kid, and it urged me to hunt down a Outrun cabinet down the seafront. The best I could find was Outrunners, but thanks to the Saturn with the Sega Ages disc, I got to play it arcade perfect at home. Fantastic.

In other news, check out this Portuguese Game Gear commercial, submitted at Youtube by SMSpower, that falsely shows off Mega Drive games being run on it. Tut tut tut, Sega.


Memorable Moments in Sega Gaming 1

Now while I said this blog would mainly be about the non-gaming side of Sega, I think I can make some exceptions. Mainly, the kind of memorable moments in Sega games that are the reason I love Sega games in the first place. here's the first of many of these I plan to write up.


#1 Saturn Bomberman - Footie Level

Fact: Saturn Bomberman is THE multi-player game of all time, and the best of the franchise to date. Not only do you get countless different characters to pick, all sorts of options and full stats at the end of each match telling you who blew up who, you also get some totally unique stages to fight on. One of these is of a Football theme, with a goals on either side. Once most of the blocks have been cleared and everyone is running around like Looney’s kicking bombs at each other, there’s a clever trick I discovered. You can actually kick the bombs into the goal’s, and when you do, a high-pitched voice shouts “GOOOOAL!” as fire engulfs two lines of the whole stage, the one’s net to the very middle line. Anything that walks through these lines as the flames fly across the screen are doomed, and of course, if you don’t move out of those lines when you kick the bomb, you’ll be doomed too. Still, this proves to be a very useful tool in taking out other players when there’s no where for them to get trapped. Lure them to the center, kick a bomb into a goal, and leg it. This game is still a multi-player favorite in my house, and whenever I start up a Series of matches on it, most of them are on this level. Fun~



More after the jump.

Sega Super Play Trading Cards

I totally forgot I had these, and just found them in the loft yesterday. Released in 1992, this is a series of trading cards based around Mega Drive games, with 120 in the total set. I remember these being packed in little silver foil packets with a huge Sega logo and a little Sonic on, and managing after countless amount of packets to complete the whole lot. The cards are a little worse for wear with dented corners, but otherwise they see to be fine. More after the jump..

Those Sega Tour Buses

Now this is one of those 'When-Sega-were-big' things I never really got to experience, mainly due to the fact that the ruddy things never came down to Essex, but here's a little look at the rather funky tour buses that drove about the UK throughout 1994 and 1995. All these scans came from issues of S.T.C. Click to enlarge them.


More after the jump.

SegaWorld Part 3

While I have run out of photos I took myself of SegaWorld, I've stumbled across some more SegaWorld related stuff I had up in the loft with my countless other Sonic junk. Firstly, here's a three-page preview of the place featured in a 1996 Summer special Sonic comic, and contains many details (such as the names of the areas and rides) which I had forgotten. Just click to full view and try to ignore the awful 'radical' talk throughout it.


More after the jump.