If you’ve been enjoying Phantasy Star Online 2 despite the lack of a formal Western release, then you’re going to be in for a treat this June as SEGA has announced that there will be a special Sonic-themed celebration ready for you.
‘Sonic Lobby’, as its affectionately known, will be a special hub that players can log into that feature a whole range of blue blur-themed goodies. Music from Sonic Adventure will play in the background as you loiter, and a special ‘Collect Rings’ event will be playable as part of Sonic’s 25th Anniversary celebrations.
It’s not the first appearance of the Sonic Lobby in PSO2, and certainly not the first Sonic-themed celebration in a Phantasy Star Online game – this has echoes of Sonic’s 10th Anniversary celebrations on the Dreamcast back in 2001.
But, it’s nice that SEGA sees fit to see in Sonic’s 25th in what is now a traditional manner. The Sonic Lobby will be available in late June on PC, PS4 and Vita editions of PSO2 in Japan.
Sonic won’t be the only thing celebrated in collaboration form on PSO2. There will also be Sakura Taisen collabs in June, which will include themed costumes, weapons and Kobus… And strangely enough there will also be a Final Fantasy XIV collaboration coming in July. More details to come on that though.
Check out SEGA’s PSO2 Nico Nico Stream (aired Sunday) for the full details.
Man they are LOVING Adventure based content/focus at SEGA lately.
To be fair I feel the same for both the Adventure and Classic eras, serious question, what if they are working on two unannounced games for the anniversary? One might be a sequel to the Adventure games or something very similar and the other will be about classic Sonic and classic pals, they certainly have the market for both.
I really hope it is Adventure music playing – Station Square would be a perfect fit for the atmosphere of the PSO2 lobbies.
Previous years used City Escape Act 1 from Generations and Wonder World from Lost World respectively, neither particularly work as music for the lobby due being such energy-filled songs.
Awesome, hope there were a little more content like music at the open world, Sonic skins or Sonic based enemies but is still nice to see them celebrating Sonic like this.
Now…if only we could get PSO 2 in the west, huh? 😛 it’s good to see these sorts of celebrations being held still 🙂
It’s about time Sega shows us Modern Sonic themed. I hope we get either Sonic Adventure 3 or Generations 2. At least something that screams high quality.
Dang it Phantasy Star Online 2 is going to be on late June is going to be on next year that’s awesome how it polish well to take time on it!
PSO2 and the current state of Sonic are soulmates because Sega doesn’t give a damn about giving us either of them.
@Chris K.
Sega of Japan and Sonic Team have been a SA lovefest since 1998 nothing is new there, not even Sonic 4 could escape it’s pull from it’s use of dashpads out the ass, homing attack chains to even cramming a reference to Twinkle Park’s music.
But when you look at the social media account look at which Sonic is being used more while SA3 is used repeatably as punchline something Webber would be weary of doing if it actually existed because that would mean breaking NDA. No SA in sight in Tomy’s merchandise either while their classic Sonic stuff is all about flying the 25h banner.
Oh how much I would love to play PSO2 for the Sakura Taisen collab. I might have to wait until I get internet back up to play online again and stack up on mesta for the Sakura Shinguji costume.
It’s about time they done a Sakura Wars collab.
They’ve done collabs with various other Sega titles as well including:
Phantasy Star Portable series
Yakuza
Virtual On
Border Break
Virtua Fighter
Valkyria Chronicles
7th Dragon series
Space channel 5
Puyo Puyo
Shining series
I’ve been waiting on Sakura wars for a long damn time, being it’s one of their most popular game series in Japan.