It’s been a very long four days for Sonic fans everywhere thanks to SEGA’s Project Needlemouse Character Countdown. Starved for information about the game with naught but a teaser trailer and rumours of it possibly being a downloadable title for 360 and PS3 to go on, fans leapt on SEGA’s challenge to whittle down a frankly ridiculous list of possible playable characters. The first two challenges were easy with fans racking up 250 correct replies on SEGA’s blog and Facebook page in a matter of hours. The third day was harder with the target of 1000 answers on SEGA’s forum failing to be reached.
In the final challenge yesterday SEGA were asking for a mammoth 1250 correct answers to be posted to their Twitter account or for SEGA or Needlemouse to reach the trending topic list. It was a long night with an extraordinary effort put in by everyone to push for the goal. Many fans had never used Twitter before and set up an account just for this challenge. Others helped members struggling to Tweet correctly by showing them how. It wasn’t long before Twitter was drown under a wave of #SEGA and #Needlemouse posts. SEGA offered words of encouragement and for a short period we were actually posting more topics per minute than some of the top 10 trending topics. It was a valiant effort but while we never made the trending topics list we still won. At around 7am GMT SEGA gave us the word:
Congratulations everyone! 1,250+ Correct Responses reached! We’ll see you guys tomorrow morning on the SEGA Blogs for the final update
We won! Now I don’t usually post “Announcements or Updates” here at the Stadium but as a part of this challenge all week and being on the frontlines last night I felt compelled to document our desperate struggle. More importantly I wanted to say a huge “Thank You” to everyone who helped out this week in any way shape or form. Thanks to everyone who answered any of the questions, anyone who asked friends and family to help, anyone who joined a forum, Facebook or Twitter just to lend a helping hand and to anyone who tirelessly spammed Twitter last night.
I’ve no idea exactly what SEGA have planned to reveal later today. We’re getting the final playable character list, that’s a given. But the prize for winning three bonus points? That’s still a mystery. It could be anything from another teaser trailer, a cryptic screenshot to a full on Project Needlemouse unveiling with bells, whistles and everything. But in a way it doesn’t really matter what we’ve won. To me what’s important is how we won. The Sonic Community banded together for a single cause and showed SEGA emphatically that we still care about the blue hedgehog. Forget all the internet drama and stupidity; what we’ve done this week is justify SEGA’s decision to finally cater a Sonic game to his hardcore fan base. And judging by what I’ve seen this week I think the videogame community as a whole would struggle to find another community as hardcore and as loyal as us.
I’m going to leave you with this YouTube video which was posted by SEGA on Twitter last night. The man in the video encompasses the strength, loyalty and the hardcore nature of SEGA fans all over the globe. If you’ve never seen him before you’re in for a treat. It is of course, the incomparable Segata Sanshiro!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joNwYPdEBTc[/youtube]
In the final challenge yesterday SEGA were asking for a mammoth 1250 correct answers to be posted to their Twitter page or for SEGA or Needlemouse to reach the trending topic list. It was a long night with an extraordinary effort put in by everyone to push for the goal. Many fans had never used Twitter before and set up an account just for this challenge. Others helped members struggling to Tweet correctly and Twitter was drown under a wave of #SEGA and #Needlemouse posts. SEGA offered words of encouragement and for a short period we were actually posting more topics per minute than other topics on the list. It was a valiant effort but while we never made the trending topics list we still won. At around 7am GMT SEGA gave us the word:
Congratulations everyone! 1,250+ Correct Responses reached! We’ll see you guys tomorrow morning on the SEGA Blogs for the final update
We won! Now I don’t usually post “Announcements or Updates” here at the Stadium but as a part of this challenge all week and being on the frontlines last night I felt compelled to document our desperate struggle. More importantly I wanted to say a huge “Thank You” to everyone who helped out this week in any way shape or form. Thanks to everyone who answered any of the questions, anyone who asked friends and family to help, anyone who joined a forum, Facebok or Twitter just to lend a helping hand and to anyone who tirelessly spammed Twitter last night.
I’ve no idea exactly what SEGA have planned to reveal later today. We’re getting the final playable character list, that’s a given. But the prize for winning three bonus points? That’s still a mystery. It could be anything from another teaser trailer, a cryptic screenshot to a full on Project Needlemouse unveiling with bells, whistles and everything. But in a way it doesn’t really matter what we’ve won. To me what’s important is how we won. The Sonic Community banded together for a single cause and showed SEGA emphatically that we still care about the blue hedgehog. Forget all the internet drama and stupidity; what we’ve done this week is justify SEGA’s decision to finally cater a Sonic game to his hardcore fan base. And judging by what I’ve seen this week I think the videogame community as a whole would struggle to find another community as hardcore and as loyal as us.
I’m going to leave you with this YouTube video which was posted by SEGA on Twitter last night. The man in the video encompasses the strength, loyalty and the hardcore nature of SEGA fans all over the globe. If you’ve never seen him before you’re in for a treat. It is of course, the incomparable Segata Sanshiro!
SEGATA SANSHIROOOOOOOOOOOOOO! (kicks a Playstation owner in the face) KIYAAAAAAAA!
I can’t believe we won! 😀 This is awesome! Hopefully Neddlemouse’ll be the Sonic game we’ve been waiting for.
I’ll admit that I helped as well. We all worked together like we should have been doing since day 1. It didn’t take some SSMB No Drama campaign, it didn’t take a TSSZ Tangent article, heck, it didn’t take a Sonic Retro fangame.
What it took was SEGA themselves to hype us up for a common goal, and for the first time in years, Sonic fans from around the world worked together ala Sonic Heroes to get the job done. For that, I am proud of this fanbase.
Also, Segata Sanshiro finally gave us the push we needed. He skipped out on racing with his SEGA brethren for the Needlemouse cause. What a hero.
watch the announcement be that needlemouse was canceled and they’re really just working on Sonic and the Roman Empire (aka Project Sonigula)
i feel so proud to be a sonic fan right now.
now sega give us our reward!!
just what am i now doing with my new useless twitter and facebook account?
You could always Follow TSS’ Twitter (click the link at the top of the page with the Twitter logo)… 😉
good idea…
Well, I hope these bonus awards thing we will get is something good! Or otherwise this is kinda stupid…
@nuckles87:
I’m glad you didn’t kick a Wii xD
Hoping for a good bonus.
And hopefully this game will be a hit..
It is a real shame that SEGA dropped out of the console war. SEGA came up with creative new ways of gaming and they have a real passion for what they do (as seen in that silly video). SEGA was first to have a hand held system in color (GameGear). They made a handheld system that takes the same cartridges as the console system (Nomad). They invented lock on technology for extended game play (Sonic & Knuckles). First console to use CDs (SEGA CD). First Console to go online (Dreamcast). SEGA made all these creative advances independent of what Nintendo was doing. Seems all XBOX and Playstation do is copy Nintendo’s ideas.
i hope the “Special bonus” is not just the title of the game…
I’m very glad we won. Good job, everyone.
I can’t wait to see who the remaining characters are and the special bonus.
i tried to help badly! But i couldnt get a sega blog account! i feel pathetic…. Well we still got the info so we are good. I think everyone knew it was gonna be Sonic though.
You make it sound like you work for Sega by thanking us..
In any case, it was fun, well done everyone
@Kail: Haha! “Sonic and the Roman Empire”! You’re funny!
Actually, that’d work for a Sonic Storybook Game…he’s already been in armor once!
So can people PLEASE tell me why the hell he ISN’T riding a Sega Saturn in ASR?!?!?!
@SSV: And that kicked ASS! But not as much Segata…
Very interesting way to look at this whole silly PR event. In any case I really enjoyed it, if only for the hilarity of it all. Didn’t mind pitching in my answers either; it was the PERFECT excuse to play Sonic 2 and learn that 10,000 points equals an extra life (or 100 rings). And I think 20,000 equals an extra continue. Also Final Robotnik takes about 8 hits or so to beat.
In any case, it’s nice to balance out the at-times warranted negativity and pessimism with some more positive insightful commentary like this. It’s a nice little temporary unifier at least.
Sonic fans come in too many shapes and sizes from too big a stretch of time to agree with each other all of the time. It was just good to be reminded that the community, as fractured as it is, can still come together for a single cause when the incentive is tantalising enough.
The video is full of win…someone explodes when they hit the ground, giant dreamcast a weird music!
oops I mean saturn!