Young Sonic fans in East Oakland, California are in for a treat come November 1st, but not just because Sonic Generations will hit stores, but because SEGA of America will also open a Sonic the Hedgehog themed playground that very day to further celebrate their mascot’s 20th Anniversary. SEGA is teaming up with local “neighbohood hub” Youth UpRising and outdoor play non-profit group KaBOOM to create the playground. Children will also be able to help out with the design process.
The actual construction of the playground will take place on October 28th by SEGA volunteers and members of East Oakland community, and will be completed in just one day. Pretty quick, huh?
Check out the press release below.
SEGA of America Partners with KaBOOM! and Youth UpRising to Build Custom Sonic the Hedgehog Playground for the Children of East Oakland
In celebration of Sonic the Hedgehog’s 20th Anniversary, SEGA® of America, Inc. has partnered with KaBOOM! and Youth UpRising to bring the spirit of Sonic the Hedgehog and the joy of play to the community of East Oakland by designing and building a custom playground inspired by the iconic blue hedgehog.
On October 28th, volunteers from SEGA of America and members of the local community will construct the new playground in just one day. The playground will be designed by the very kids who will be enjoying it, making this new play space very special for the entire community. The space will provide more than 400 children in the East Oakland community with a safe place to play, creating an inspirational and fun location for all to enjoy for years to come.
“SEGA is very excited to partner with KaBOOM! to bring an amazing and unique new play-space to the kids of Youth UpRising and East Oakland,” says Marcella Churchill, Director of Marketing at SEGA of America. “There could not be a better way to celebrate Sonic the Hedgehog’s 20th Anniversary than to continue his message of energy, fun and play among the community with this playground and partnership.”
“We’re excited to be working in conjunction with SEGA and Youth UpRising to provide children in Oakland with a new playground,” said Darell Hammond, KaBOOM! Founder and CEO. “Every child deserves to have a great place to play and with the new playground in Oakland KaBOOM! will move one step closer to our vision of a great place to play within walking distance of every child in America.”
To cap off Sonic’s 20th Anniversary, SEGA’s highly anticipated new title, Sonic Generations™, will be released this Winter. The game features Sonic the Hedgehog, as both the much loved classic 1991 character and the modern-day video game hero he has become. In this exciting fast-paced adventure set across three defining eras of Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic speeds through all new stages inspired by the most iconic environments from his 20 year history; playing as Classic Sonic and Modern Sonic in all new, re-imagined stunning levels. Sonic Generations will be available on November 1, 2011 for the PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system and the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, and this winter for the Nintendo 3DS™.
SEGA’s Sonic the Hedgehog playground will open for play the day of the Sonic Generations™ American launch date, Tuesday, November 1st . at Youth UpRising, located at 8711 MacArthur Blvd, Oakland, CA 94605.
For more information about SEGA or Sonic Generations, please visit www.sega.com.
For more news, follow SEGA on Twitter @SEGA or like us on Facebook www.facebook.com/sega.
About SEGA® of America, Inc.: SEGA® of America, Inc. is the American arm of Tokyo, Japan-based SEGA® Corporation, a worldwide leader in interactive entertainment both inside and outside the home. The company develops, publishes and distributes interactive entertainment software products for a variety of hardware platforms including PC, wireless devices, and those manufactured by Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony Computer Entertainment. SEGA of America’s Web site is located at www.sega.com
About KaBOOM!: KaBOOM! is the national non-profit dedicated to saving play. Children today spend less time playing outdoors than any previous generation, a fact that is having disastrous consequences on their health, achievement levels, and overall well-being. To fight this Play Deficit, social entrepreneur Darell Hammond founded non-profit KaBOOM! in 1996 in Washington, D.C. with a vision of creating a great place to play within walking distance of every child in America. Since then, KaBOOM! has mapped over 85,000 places to play, built more than 2,000 playgrounds, and successfully advocated for play policies in hundreds of cities across the country. KaBOOM! also provides communities with online tools to self-organize and take action to support play on both a local and national level.
We’ll have more information as it’s revealed.
Sources: GameSetWatch and iStockAnalyst
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Coolio! 😀
I guess they couldn’t make on on Hampstead Heath 🙁
why cant cool stuff like this happen in North Carolina
I know right!? I live in surry county and have to travel all the way to Winston-Salem to get a Sonic comic! grrr……
D: That’s sooooo far from here!! But my mom has a friend that lives near there so i’ll see it someday… I hope there’s checkered ground…and a loop…and little Sonic character statues…
And isn’t the construction awfully fast? I hope it isn’t…UNFINISHED. (Sonic 06) lol
well that would be NO USE for the childeren right?
Think of all the kids who will get hurt on the corkscrews and loops! Haha
Ha ha! XD
AW C’MON!!! i thought they ment in the uk but america? wtf?!
You have a roller coaster and a hotel room AND a SG collector’s edition. This is a small playground for kids.
Touche, my friend.
Now i want to go to california SO EFFIN BAD!
I wonder if you can ride in Robotnik’s flying pod. itd be funny if it’d had buttons that would activate different robotnik lines.
Oh holy lord I need pictures of this ASAP
Haha, this is now one of the many things I miss about being young(er). I’ll be living around area within the next year though, so I’ll be able to see it at least, lol.
You are now imagining adult Sonic fans with Sonic hats going to a children’s playground.
YES
YEEESSSSSSSSSSS
UK got a collector’s edition.
AU got a preorder bonus.
We get a playground.
SOUNDS LEGIT
Correction, Europe and Australia got the Collector’s Edition. UK isn’t the only part of Europe :p US got the pre-order bonus. I wish you guys in the US got the Collector’s Edition too.
I knew SEGA liked us best.
…Uh…Oakland?…Seriously? I know it’s somewhat close to SoA but…
…Then again I’ve never been to “East” Oakland before. Here’s hoping it’s taken care of at least for a little while.
Yeah… If the area is anything like my local area in the UK, then it won’t take a day for the playground to get plastered in graffiti and damaged.
let me guess, that local area is willenhall
Yeah East Oakland is I don’t know… A BIT DANGEROUS to be building a playground >_>
Spikes under the monkey bars.
Those poor children.
Don’t worry, there will be some invincibility screens and some rings there
Hopefully those poor children won’t have to deal with a certain Cat and Crocodile… lol
Hopefully they’ll also put something up saying “Don’t feed the Badniks” xD
We need one here to in Vegas (casino park) 😀
This has inspired me. I will be coming to and building a Sonic-themed playground.
All joking aside, i wonder what it’ll be like. The kids are designing it, so right now i’m cringing at images of a mini Tropical Resort ending up as the monument to Sonic. It’d be neat if it had elements from each zone in both versions of generations ending up somewhere. I know green checkers are a given, but how about CHEMICAL SLIDES? A Radical Highway jungle gym? MUSHROOM HILL MUSHROOMS? Crisis City tornadoes? Okay, maybe not that… A Final-Rushy-ARK area set to the side to serve as a mini skatepark would be boss. I’d buy SOAP Shoes for the occasion.
Crisis City tornadoes! XD I’d totally go on that! However I’d feel a cow, or two…unless it’s the same one? : P
“We gotta go, we got COWS!”
would that turn into “We gotta go, we got Eggman”?
Do they need any more volunteers? D: Rather help out with that than go to work 😛
If only they made this when I was 7 years old 🙁 . I don’t know if parents want their kids near a chemical plant or start a gambling addicition in casino night.
So about that Generations….
Uh, Sonic Spinball Land? lol
I agree with Blaze and Shadzter . I have friends living there and live near by my self. Oakland is very bad in most areas I would be shocked if it wasn’t on fire by the end of the first hour and after they put the fires out it will be “mysteriously” covered in graffiti it will be Fairy land all over again. Another fun park for kids in Oakland. (greatly exaggerated but somewhere in between)
Wild Canyon Rock Climbing
Mushroom Hill Swings
Sonic Heroes Go-Kart…thing
Shadow’s Monkey-Bars
Tails’s curvy slide
Knuckles’s sand pit
Silver’s mini-balance beam
Sonic’s 50m dash
Blaze’s fireman pole?
xD…the possibilities…
…are never ending
Will they build an Oil Ocean themed playground in Western Florida? He he he… I’ll see if I can get in on this, though I’m not 5-12 years old, but I live less than an hour away…
brb roadtrip.
*loving living in California and being a Sonic fan* :J Hehe.
Not to stereotype Oakland but, I wonder how it will take until the playground gets trashed? East Oakland is unfortunately known for some of the highest crime rates in the city.
WTF?!? I live in Las Vegas so I guess I’ll have to make a trip down to east Oakland. Why can’t any of this cool shit happen in Vegas 🙁
I live in Vegas too….. IDK why no coll junk happens here. The only thing that kids talk about at my school is going to Adventuredome/Frightdome 🙁
I say they remake every playground in the U.S. to be sonic themed. It’s the only logical choice. 😉
lol That’s ridiculous. Of course I’m too old for playgrounds so I haven’t the slightest interest. Might’ve when I was little. The kids’ll love it. But still. A Sonic playground? That’s just silly, but not bad. lol Heck I don’t think I’ve heard of a themed PLAYGROUND ever.
So, what, they gonna put spike death traps and killer robots everywhere. That would be the true Sonic experience.
xD I live near Oakland. That city is known for it’s high crime rates and gangs. I hope that place doesn’t get trashed…
Now we’ll find out if children can do a better job at designing something fun than SEGA.
I’m not expecting this to be an especially Sonical playground honestly. At least, not as much as some of the commenters seem to. Maybe some motobugs on springs instead of horses or whatever, painted golden rings to climb across instead of monkey bars, a Sonic statue or mural or something with a few voice clips (CHECK OUT THE SLIDE, WHOA!) and everything else just painted Sonic themed. Checkered hills and palm trees and whatnot. I hope I’m wrong and its unbelievable though. I would drive to California to put a quarter in an Eggmobile and rock back and forth for 30 seconds while doing my best to look dastardly.
Oh wow, this is awesome! My favorite baseball team are the Oakland A’s! I’ll spend a day in Oakland watching the A’s and playing awkwardly with little children on Sonic-themed playground equipment.
That won’t be creepy or anything…
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG PARK IN ….Oakland!? Now I just gotta brave the ghetto and pray I don’t get shot by one of Eggman’s badniks… or, ya know… gangsters. Oakland is trash.. I used to work out there and always feared for my life. =/
They should show pictures…
brb moving to East Oakland
I live near East Oakland, and I have been to SoA. Though I am not old enough to drive there. :c
Awesome The Sonic fans in East Oakland will at least get to celebrate in Sonic Style 🙂
Ok, when does Canada get a taste of Sonic’s 20th Anniversary? Seriously, this is awesome but Nintendo’s got an office in Canada, why not SEGA? 🙁
Now we all know where the next Sonic Boom is gonna be 😀 PLAYGROUND TIME!!
Since it’s only taking a day to build, let’s just hope it doesn’t turn out anything like Krabby Land on SpongeBob…
That’s awesome. Too bad I live on the other side of the country. 🙁
I’m gonna go on opening day since I don’t live that far from Oakland,CA =D
Good thing I live in San Francisco,CA =)
OH, You can’t get hardly anything like plushies and what not when you live in N.C. It’s just unfair, and I’m poor…. BLAH! I’ll just keep my eyes peeled and fingers crossed! O.O’