There are plenty of reasons to be cheerful at this turn of the new decade. Not only is there an open road for a line of upcoming Sonic games to come and excite us, but this year also marks the 20th anniversary of this very website. It doesn’t feel that long ago that we were celebrating our 10th anniversary!
We’ve been through a lot, these past two decades. When we launched in October 2000, Sonic Adventure 2 was the most hyped game ever (except we didn’t know any details about it really until the public demo released in February 2001), and we were about four months away from SEGA exiting the console business.
Since then, we’ve constantly reported on the biggest movements in the Sonic world: from the blue blur’s first foray onto Nintendo hardware, to his super-hyped-and-then-super-panned entry on Xbox 360 in 2006, to the waggle-tastic sidesteps on Wii and most recently, the attempt to create a trans-media universe with Sonic Boom. We’ve seen it all, and at various points in our twenty-year journey we shared these moments with you, our awesome readers and community.
TSS has, over the years, become much more than just a website. We were at the forefront of the online community trends; at one point establishing a Network of family sites. We operated SEGASonic Radio, an online radio station; our SSMB forums is still going strong and has over the years produced a number of community-made projects; we held a fan game studio called Shadow Team; our DefChamba media depository brought a lot of cool downloads to the masses; and we established a little real-life convention called The Summer of Sonic with some of our closest pals.
About the only thing we haven’t explored properly to date, is a YouTube channel. Maybe that’s something we will tackle over the course of the year as we do have a lot to talk about…
The BIG MONTH will be in October, and we’re planning a number of cool things to happen during that time. Until then, we will be sharing the odd memories of the past 20 years – we’ll be sharing our biggest features, stories and achievements both on the site, on SSMB and on our social media channels. We’d love for you to join us.
If you want to help join the festivities – whether it’s clubbing together to create a new SSMB-produced music album, drawing up some fan art to celebrate the occasion with us, or anything else – be sure to hit me up directly on SSMB via my online account. Or, you can send us anything via our Contacts Page.
Here’s to many more years of chatting about Sonic with all of you – this site has only lasted this long because of the amazing community that comes back to us to enjoy our content. And words cannot express how much we truly appreciate that. Thank you so much. And here’s to a great 2020! Cheers!