Welcome to the Archive site of The Sonic Stadium (2008-2023)
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Sonic Frontiers looks to be the most ambitious entry in the game series yet – and not just in the gameplay department. While Sonic’s latest adventure does aim to reinvent the tried-and-tested format with its free-roaming ‘open zone’ concept, SEGA is also keen to use the game as a stepping stone to connect the multiple entertainment universes of Sonic the Hedgehog together in a unified way. And it all starts with Sonic Frontiers’ story, itself a collaboration between Sonic Team and IDW Sonic comic writer Ian Flynn.
We were given an opportunity to sit down with Takashi Iizuka, head of Sonic Team, for a brief five minutes, to discuss the implications of Flynn’s involvement with the game and what it could mean for other Sonic universes. We also asked about those darn cute Koco as well, don’t worry.
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The next wave of Jakks Pacific’s 4” figures come out next month, and we’ve finally got some images!
This wave has some of Sonic’s less popular friends. Amongst the modern characters, we’ve got Amy Rose and Vector the Crocodile, and for the classic characters we have yet another Classic Sonic, and…Ray the Flying Squirrel!
Merch for both Vector and Ray tend to be quite rare. I’m fairly certain this is the first time Ray has ever gotten an action figure, while this is only Vector’s second action figure ever.
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An image taken from this year’s Gamescom event in Germany appears to confirm that Big the Cat will feature in Sonic Frontiers.
A tweet from @Bibouboul today shows two show-goers watching an in-game scene with the massive mouser alongside Sonic, who appears to have a fishing rod in hand.
While there is no official confirmation as to Big’s role in the game, it does tease elements of the fishing game that is purported to be returning to the series.
Stay tuned for more on Frontiers as it comes!
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A whole bunch of info came out about Sonic Frontiers today, and it’s not just what we got in the trailer. A pre-order bonus, an ”Adventurer’s Treasure Box,” will be available for anyone who pre-orders. Check out the image below:
In addition to this, the game’s Steam page has also confirmed that it will be using the infamous Denuvo anti-piracy software.
Finally, it appears anyone who signs up for the Sonic Frontiers newsletter will receive codes for free in-game content. You can sign up here.
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While not quite headlining the Gamescom Opening Night Live presentation, Sonic was promised and delivered. The game is set to release on November 8 to all major platforms, and while we’ll put together a full breakdown of details, features, and speculation later, you can catch the trailer now:
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Well, for anyone who’s ever wanted to listen to the Sonic 2 movie soundtrack through their dad’s vintage audio cassette tape player…now you can! Well, a few of you can. Enjoy the Ride Records is selling an extremely limited number of these cassette tapes through their website for just $14.99. If you want a copy, you’d best get on it, because only 250 copies are being sold, and they are already 50% sold out.
You can buy it here. You can check out photos below.
The Sonic 1 movie vinyl is also back in stock. It’s available in two colors, Tricolor SWIRL (Red, White and Blue) and Golden Ring.
You can buy it here. You can check out photos below:
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Well, we’ve got another Sonic Frontiers leak, this time via what appears to be a flier for merch. It’s hard to tell, since everything is either in Chinese or Japanese and translation tools aren’t much help.
Bare minimum, the image below gives us a new, low res look at some character art from the game. Sonic, Tails, Amy, Knuckles, and the kocos are all featured, and there appear to be two silhouettes with question marks, which may be pointing towards to other yet-to-be-revealed characters for the game. These appear to be prizes for something.
The merch has a release date of November 15, which could point towards a release date of the game itself. Sonic games usually hit around this time of year, so it wouldn’t be especially surprising. The flier also makes mention of DLC, which could confirm that Sonic Frontiers will have some.
Check out the flier below:
The flier came from a Taiwanese website. You can find it here.
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The second Sonic the Hedgehog movie is (finally) about to be released to cinemas in Japan, and there’s been plenty of hype building up in the country as they get to see Sonic and Knuckles in live action. An interview with a producer at SEGA discusses the success of the first movie – and interestingly appears to suggest a release window for the upcoming Netflix series ‘Sonic Prime’ as well.
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King Ice has revealed on their twitter that they will be selling a collector’s edition Super Sonic necklace on their site today, at 1PM EST/10AM PST. It will be limited to 200 pieces. You can check out a photo below:
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After announcing a world premiere new look of the game at Opening Night Live next week, you would expect Sonic Frontiers to make some kind of formal appearance on the show floor at Gamescom 2022. Well, luckily for anyone who’s attending, those expectations were right. SEGA has sent a press release confirming a playable demo as well as a meet and greet with Takashi Iizuka.
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The publication of a Hollywood trade magazine has apparently revealed plot details for the upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog 3 movie. The sequel isn’t due to release in theaters until December 2024, but it sounds like we already may have an idea of what might happen and who may be involved.
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I’m not a keyboard hobbyist. My day-to-day workhorse is a straightforward wireless Logitech board that I use until it stops working. So when keyboard maker Higround provided us with a sample of their Sonic the Hedgehog line of USB wired keyboards and accessories, I was curious (and a bit skeptical) of what using a higher end keyboard would be like. For me, the shift hasn’t revolutionized how I think about keyboards, nor will it supplant my current keyboard for daily use, but Higround’s design is undeniably quite functional and a beautiful, compact art object.
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SEGA has formally ruled out delaying the launch of Sonic Frontiers, and reiterated its “high expectations” for the upcoming adventure game to perform well when it launches this Winter.
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You might have heard chatter on social media about a fan project that just wrapped up this week, called ‘Sonic Omens’. The final chapters of this impressively ambitious – but highly controversial – fan game was completed and released to the world a few days ago, and the Sonic community has been quick to comment on how developer Ouroboros Studio has made use of the franchise’s accepted canon.
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Mediatonic’s ever popular (and now free-to-play) bumbling bean platforming-royale now has new Sonic cosmetics and level challenges. Previously, the game offered limited time events for the Knuckles and Sonic costumes. Both suits have returned to the game’s store, alongside costumes for Tails, Dr. Robotnik, and Super Sonic, and a “You’re Too Slow” toe tapping emote.
The surprisingly brief event will run until August 15th, so if you’re after these cosmetics and levels, you’ll need to sprint! It is not clear at this point if the costumes, emote, or levels will remain available and in rotation after the August 15 event deadline.
(Thanks to ZeBladeGunner for the video link)
The official trailer shows off the the new costumes as well as the emote and Green Hill styled level challenges, where players are collecting rings while passing through gates and bouncing on springs.
Promotional (free) missions will let the player collect gems to unlock smaller Sonic rewards, such as a name plate, a checkerboard and ring player skin, and Sonic’s iconic shoes.
In paid content, each new character costume is 800 Show-Bucks for each individually or 1,200 for two-character packs, including a Sonic/Knuckles pack and a Tails/Eggman pack. The “You’re Too Slow” emote is 400 Show-Bucks.
(Note: The prices for the “Dynamic Duo” pack appears lower than the expected price in the screenshot due to us having the Knuckles costume unlocked during a previous event.)
As a reminder, Show-Bucks can be purchased (the most cost-efficient all-Sonic-content purchase being $19.99 + 7.99 USD for 3800 Show-Bucks total at time of writing) or earned through the paid Season Pass (which costs 950 Show-Bucks, but offers up to 1,500 Show-Bucks across the entire season).
If you don’t already follow our YouTube or Twitch channels, be on the lookout for upcoming streams of the new content before it dashes off into the sunset!
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Geoff Keighley has announced that Sonic Frontiers will be receiving a world premiere neww look during Gamescom Opening Night Live!, which will run on August 23 at 7PM BST/2PM EST/11AM PST. Little else is currently known about this, though it will presumably show off some never-before-seen stuff from the game.
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You can find Sonic 2 anywhere DVDs and blu-rays are sold, including Amazon, Best Buy, Target, and Walmart, mostly between $17.99 and $30.
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Sonic the Hedgehog has come back to multiplayer game Fall Guys, and this time around the selection of wacky bean costumes based on Sonic, Tails and Knuckles are available for players on multiple game platforms. Not only that, but Dr. Eggman and Super Sonic also appears to have joined the disaster party.
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Paramount has gone ahead and announced the release date for the Sonic 3 movie: it’s going to hit theaters on December 20, 2024. I imagine there will be some variation in release dates between regions, but regardless: Sonic 3 is officially going to be a holiday season movie!
This will mark the first time a Sonic movie has been scheduled to come out during a highly competitive time for movies. It shares a date with James Cameron’s Avatar 3, and the holiday season as a whole is always populated by major movie releases. This would seem to demonstrate that Paramount has a lot of confidence in this franchise!
This also means that Sonic 3 will be coming out more then two and a half years after Sonic 2, a bigger gap then between Sonic 1 and 2, though we will be getting the Knuckles TV series next year.
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As is typically the practice of movies these days, Sonic 2 contained a major tease for its sequel in its end credits: the reveal of Shadow the Hedgehog. Beyond Shadow being imprisoned in a stasis tube in a black site for 50 years, nothing else was revealed in that scene. The concept art for that scene has now been released, however, and it contains some interesting tidbits, including something that may have implications on Sonic 3 if it’s followed up on. The concept art was created by Michal Kus, who posted them on his ArtStation page.
First, we’ve got some images that give us a better look at what Shadow’s stasis tube may look like:
Next up, we’ve got something more interesting, a look at the other side of the room. And…is that Professor Gerald?
This is concept art, and these details didn’t make it into the final movie, so they aren’t canon. We are not guaranteed to find Shadow rooming with a skeleton. Nevertheless, it is interesting seeing Sonic 2 concept art going this dark. We’ll know soon enough if this’ll be followed up on in the next movie.
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UPDATE: The full patch notes have been added to the bottom of this article.
While we love Sonic Origins here at Stadium, there’s no denying that bits of that collection released rough. Sometimes palette change animations would freeze, sometimes the game would forget that you’ve collected all the Super Emeralds, and sometimes Tails’ AI in Sonic 2 would fail to despawn him when he’s too far away, causing him to run into a wall and jump. And jump. And jump. And jump. Until you relive the PTSD of your 5-year-old sibling taking the second controller back in 1992.
We finally have our first major patch for the game, and it sounds like it addresses at least one (if not more) of the game’s major issues. MP1st (who in turn grabbed the info from PS4 update history), lists the brief patch notes that are vague in some areas, and very specific in others:
Added features to the “Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles” sound test – Fixed track mismatches in the Museum for certain music tracks included in the Classic Music Pack – Corrected an issue in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 where Tails goes off-screen and is unable to rejoin – Additional bug fixes
Track mismatches refers to a handful of mislabeled tracks included in the Classic Music DLC, such as the track names being swapped for Sonic Spinball’s bonus stage and boss fight music, or the Credits/Menu/Invincible themes in 3D Blast. And while we don’t yet have a sense of what “Additional bug fixes” encompasses, it’s a relief to know I can safely traverse Metropolis Zone without Miles mashing his distant immortal face into a wall for five straight minutes.
The patch has not propagated to every platform at time of writing, but keep an eye out over the next few days.
Comments that make the joke “but did they patch out the bad music” will not be approved, because I saw that coming a mile away, and thus it is not as clever as you think it is. Those comments should be directed at YouTube and Twitter, where they will join the 4000 people also making that joke.
Thanks to DauntlessMonk for the news tip.
UPDATE: Thanks to a commenter going by the handle “Update Name,” we were directed to SEGA Asia’s official Origins site for the full list of updates. It seems like a lot (hence us putting it at the end), but it’s fairly normal to group so many very contextual changes into a larger patch to reduce the number of patches sent out. For convenience, we’ve sorted the list by game:
Overall Fixes
Fixed a bug that was causing some songs from the Classic Music Pack to have incorrect titles displayed in the Museum.
Fixed a typo in the credits.
Removed an extra space from “PlayStation™Store” in the Simplified Chinese text. (PlayStation®5 / PlayStation®4)
Fixed a bug where exiting while connected to Xbox Live and syncing data would cause the game to crash. (Xbox Series X|S)
Fixed a bug where having multiple autosaves in a short period of time would result in them not saving correctly. (PlayStation®5 / PlayStation®4)
Fixed a bug that was causing save file contents to be different when manually saving the game. (Xbox One / Xbox Series X|S)
Fixed a bug that caused the game to freeze for about 10 seconds when going to offline mode after launching the game in online mode. (Xbox One / Xbox Series X|S)
Fixed a bug where launching the game while connected to a network, disconnecting from that network after reaching the Main Menu, playing a sound in the Museum, and then returning to the Main Menu would result in a crash after 15 seconds. (Xbox One / Xbox Series X|S)
Fixed a bug that was causing lower-performance GPUs to be automatically selected in multiple-GPU systems. (Steam / Epic Games)
Mission Mode
Fixed a bug in the “Fireball Dash” mission where it was possible to move outside of the mission area, and clearing the mission would result in the player becoming stuck.
Fixed a bug in the “Animal Rescue” mission where players would stand on top of clouds instead of bouncing or falling off them.
Fixed a bug in the “Bounce House” mission where characters would become inoperable if they collided with a Bounce Pad from the bottom when time expired.
Fixed a bug in the “Extreme! Super Sonic Finish” mission where falling off the platform shortly after reaching the goal would cause the camera to lock and prevent the player from progressing.
Fixed a bug in the “Aerial Attack” mission where players would get stuck on blocks and be unable to move.
Fixed a bug in the “Slippery Swim” mission that was causing invisible blocks to appear in areas they aren’t supposed to appear in.
Sonic the Hedgehog
Fixed a bug where retrying a stage in Classic Mode from My Data and getting a Game Over would make players get stuck at the Title Screen.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2
Fixed a bug where Tails would not return from outside the screen and a sound effect would continually play.
Fixed a bug that caused the sound effect for collecting Rings to be interrupted when collecting them in quick succession.
Fixed a bug that caused Tails’ flight sound effect to continually play after moving to the next stage if you were flying with Tails during the transition.
Fixed a bug in 2 Player VS mode where the time would never expire if it reached 0 during a player mistake.
Story Mode: Fixed a bug where the transition time from Mystic Cave Zone Act 2 to Hidden Palace 2 would be added to the player’s Best Time.
Fixed a bug that was causing crashes due to incorrect object calculations.
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles
Added a function to Sound Test.
Adjusted Competition Mode on the Nintendo Switch™ so that it can be played without registering two Joy-Cons™ / Pro controllers. *Made registration for two Joy-Cons™ / Pro controllers in Time Attack unnecessary, and made it possible to cancel controller registration in other modes.
Fixed a bug where leaving many Item Boxes in front of the sub-boss of Hydrocity Zone Act 1 would cause the game to crash when defeating the sub-boss and moving on to the next Act.
Fixed a bug that was causing players to get stuck when playing a Special Stage from the level select menu after playing Time Attack Mode.
Fixed a bug in Competition mode that caused players to go back a lap when they took damage or fell out of the stage.
Fixed a bug in Angel Island Zone Act 1 that teleported players when the island is set on fire.
Fixed a bug in Carnival Night Zone Act 2 where the boss would leave the area if hit by a mid-air attack while entering.
Fixed a bug that caused a sound effect to continually play when the player transitioned stages after defeating the boss of Death Egg Zone Act 1.
Fixed a bug in Flying Battery Zone Act 1 that caused a sound effect to continually play if a player transitioned stages when close to a magnetic object.
Fixed a bug in Competition Mirror Mode that was causing the courses to not be mirrored.
Fixed a bug that caused Sonic and Tails to get stuck on a burning rope in the middle of Angel Island Zone Act 2, which made it impossible to progress.
When starting in Classic Mode with a save file where the game has been cleared, entering and exiting a Special Stage without touching a checkpoint would cause the game time to incorrectly start at 9:59.
When starting the game as Sonic with a cleared-game save data file, performing certain actions in Angel Island Zone Act 1 would cause the player to be incorrectly moved to Knuckles’ boss area route.
Fixed a bug in Classic Mode where performing certain actions in the boss fight of Lava Reef Zone Act 2 would make the camera shift, and the character would fall out of the stage.
Fixed a bug in Angel Island Zone Act 1 where performing certain actions after the stage is set on fire caused the player to lose a life.
Fixed a bug in Lava Reef Zone Act 2 that allowed players to avoid the falling boulder that moves them to the boss stage.
Fixed a bug in the boss battle of Hydrocity Zone Act 2 that caused an invisible ceiling to appear, which prevented players from jumping higher.
Fixed a bug where immediately opening the pause menu when entering the first Special Ring in Mushroom Hill Zone Act 1 and selecting “Restart” would cause players to start the stage from an unnatural position.
Starting the game in Classic Mode using saved data with a recorded Time Over in Angel Island Zone Act 1, and then getting a Game Over would cause players to immediately lose a life upon reaching the sub-boss.
Fixed a bug where opening the pause menu just before entering a Special Stage and then selecting “Restart” would move the player to a different Act.
Fixed a bug where coins would be increased in debug mode.
Fixed a bug where the BGM in Special Stages would slow down after collecting 50 Rings.
When starting the game in Classic Mode on a save file with a recorded Time Over, the Time would not reset from 9:59 upon clearing a stage.
Fixed a bug in Classic Mode of Death Egg Zone Act 2 where opening the pause menu and selecting “Restart” after transitioning to the boss stage would cause the player restart the boss fight with 0:10 Time.
Fixed a bug in Mushroom Hill Zone Act 2 that caused textures of objects to not display correctly. (Nintendo Switch™)
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Sonic Triple Trouble 16-bit, a fan-made remake of one of Sonic’s Game Gear releases, is officially finished and available for everyone to play! Download it here.
The fangame, has been in development for roughly five years, and completely remakes the Game Gear adventure with brand new levels, remade music, brand new bosses and special stages, a plot that recontextualizes the game as a follow up to Sonic & Knuckles, and even a fully fleshed out multiplayer mode with multiple game play types and a campaign! The game also has it’s share of brand new surprises for anyone familiar with the Game Gear original.
We’ve already had a few days with the game, and while our review is forthcoming, I can confirm here and now that the game is superb. We’ve previewed both of the game’s demos over the last few years, which you can check out here and here. We also interviewed Copeland a few years ago, which you can find here.
You can expect some articles, videos and streams of the game from us over the next few days.
The Sonic Stadium may link to retailers and earn a small commission on purchases made from users who click those links. These links will only appear in articles related to the product, in an unobtrusive manner, and do not influence our editorial decisions in any way.
![Sonic the Hedgehog 3 Movie Synopsis Reportedly Revealed Via Trade Publication [U]](https://archive.sonicstadium.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/sonicmovie-trio-895x375.jpeg)
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