Welcome to the Archive site of The Sonic Stadium (2008-2023)
Please note that this site is no longer being updated or maintained; as a result, there may be design issues, and links to images and other media may be broken. Links to posts may redirect you to the same article on the current Sonic Stadium website.
Founder of The Sonic Stadium and creator/co-organiser of the Summer of Sonic convention. Loves talking about Sonic the Hedgehog in his spare time. Likes Sonic Colours a little too much for his own good, apparently.
We’re not ones to blow our own trumpet, despite the somewhat laid back approach we have to writing about Sonic the Hedgehog and just generally being fans of the series. Hey, we like a laugh, and we’re just here to have a laugh with you. But since its opening on the 24th October 2000, I think this little website has accomplished quite a lot, given its rags-to-riches story. We will be celebrating our tenth anniversary starting tomorrow, but first let’s take a quick look back at some of the things we’ve created for the community, for better or for worse. Continue reading 2000 – 2009: The Decade At TSS
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2009’s almost out. That means we’ve enjoyed a whole decade of Sonic the Hedgehog goodness in the last ten years, from 2000’s Sonic Shuffle (for Americans, we didn’t get it until the year after, damn SEGA) to 2009’s Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games. So, rather than just round up the games of the year, The Sonic Stadium crew have taken to list their Top 10 Sonic games of the decade!
This is how we’ve done it. A bunch of TSS Staffers wrote over their unique Top 10 (which will be listed at the end of this article). Along with it, a short paragraph as to why they ranked each game the way they did. When bunching all of these lists together, we formed an average by giving points to each game’s placement on each staffer’s countdown (so a #1 position would get 10 points, and a game in 10th place would get 1 point). Add all the points up, and we have our own, not-so-scientific average. What game will get TSS’ #1 Sonic Game of the Decade? Read on, dear reader… Continue reading The Top 10 Sonic Games Of The 2000’s
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The results are in for the Sonic Site Awards 2009! You can listen to The Sonic Hour special broadcast that announced the winners live last night by going straight to our Media portal, or by subscribing to TSH’s podcast feed). For a full rundown of nominee placement, head to the Sonic Site Awards page, where you can see total votes and percentage votes for all the runners.
But for the sake of brevity, here are this year’s winners:
A big win for the Brazilian Sonic community this year – a side of the online fanbase that is just finding its feet and experiencing a boom not unlike the British and American one of several years ago. The level of excitement and energy between these websites is quite inspiring and reminds me of when I first joined the Sonic community way back in ’99. There are some truly deserving websites here, and I hope you’ll join me in congratulating them and visiting their sites on a regular basis.
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It’s Christmas Eve. You don’t expect us to be writing many Sonic articles and posts over the next couple of days, because we’re all going to spend some time with our families and friends. Most probably while playing Sonic the Hedgehog games.
All of us at The Sonic Stadium, SSMB and all over the TSS Network want to wish all of our readers (and even those that don’t like us) a very Merry Christmas and a Happy, successful New Year into 2010.
How do you plan to spend your Christmas holidays? Let us know in the comments box below! Feel free to give your best wishes to fellow Sonic fans on the SSMB Forums, and we’ll see you throughout next week to round off the year – and the decade – in Sonic the Hedgehog.
Our friend from across the Channel, Adamis Fox, sent us a Christmas card from France Belgium (click to enlarge) – we’re posting it here to share it with you all and extend our wishes to Adamis and the French/Belgium Sonic community (and all international communities beyond). Take care and have a good one!
= The Sonic Stadium =
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The votes are in! We’ve tallied up all the nomination’s poll numbers for the Sonic Site Awards 2009, and soon we will be announcing the winners. As is tradition with the SSAs, there will be a live online broadcast celebrating and announcing the award winners. Known as the ‘Ceremony’, this year’s event will take place live on SEGASonic Radio.
Listen to The Sonic Hour on Sunday, 27th December 2009, 6pm GMT to catch the winners and the no-doubt comical celebration that Dreadknux (me) and Roareye Black will provide. Won’t it be jolly good fun? We’ll also be talking about the New Year and things like that, in a bumper TSH special.
You can listen to SEGASonic Radio live, right now, by clicking here – you can perpetually listen in from today and wait there until Sunday if you really want. Or, you could remember later on and come back. Your choice.
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Proving that the Sonic Cafe titles are still a hit five years on, SEGA’s official Sonic Channel blog has announced a new mobile phone game for Japanese handsets – Sonic Bowling! The game is available on mobile phones on the SoftBank network, but Docomo and au network versions are coming soon.
Developed by ★ Puyo! SEGA, the game is essentially bowling with Sonic characters. The models, Hunter from the SSMB noted, look similar to the ones used in the Nintendo DS version of Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games. Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Amy are confirmed as playable characters, each with their own playing style.
As well as regular ten-pin play, you can upload your scores against the country-wide ranking system, or take part in ten missions handed to you by Dr. Eggman (because obviously he’d be able to take over the world if you sucked at bowling, or something).
If you have a touch-capable phone, there are optional control methods that take advantage of that, and if you don’t fancy spending 315 Yen on the program just yet, take solace in knowing that SEGA are offering a free trial version so you can get into the swing of the kingpin. For everyone outside Japan though, don’t take solace in the fact that, like other Sonic Cafe games, this is not likely to reach Western networks.
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Hey guys, as you’ve probably noticed it’s December this month! So we’ve gone all festive for the occasion! Do you like this new skin? It’s pretty jolly, isn’t it? 🙂 We’re not stopping at decorations though, we’ve already got a lot of great holiday season material online and ready for you to read. Check out the start of the 25 Days of Christmas NiGHTS, check out eBay Watch to find some great new merchandise (for yourself or a present), or look to be a bit more giving in the New Year with details on Sonic Relief 2010.
We have some more special stuff planned too, like some holiday-themed articles and some great festive updates for you. I’ll have some time off of work soon for Christmas holiday – I’ll be personally spending the time updating areas like the Scanned Material and Game Archive sections. By the way, did you notice that I’ve launched the Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing page? Give it a look here – I’ll be adding more details on the game via its ‘Gameplay’ and ‘Zones’ pages later on too.
Christmas is all about sharing and being with your friends, so why not pop into the SSMB Forums and enjoy the festive cheer with your fellow Sonic fans as well? I’m in the process of sorting out a special Sonic X-Mas skin for that too, so don’t worry – it’s just taking a little longer because I have to recreate the Sonical skin as a base.
We hope you enjoy the content that comes over the holiday, and I’d wish you all a Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays but the date’s weeks away yet. I’ll simply say, good luck in the Christmas Shopping rush!
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Sonic Team legend and Sonic the Hedgehog co-creator, Naoto Ohshima, spoke to Gamasutra about some of his past work, including his time directing Sonic CD and the inspiration for the blue blur’s sneakers.
After discussing NiGHTS Into Dreams, attention turned to Ohshima’s Mega CD project and the reason behind time travel – a theme he has since revisited with Blinx: The Time Sweeper on the Xbox. “I wanted a Sonic where the levels changed on you — where Sonic would go really fast, like in Back to the Future, and bang, wind up in a different place.”
Ohshima also spoke of the time-travelling cutscene, displayed whenever Sonic reaches a speed in Sonic CD that sends him to the Past or Future. The original plan was to have an instant change, following a sonic boom, but apparently it was not technically possible so the loading cutscene stuck.
Ohshima: What I really wanted to do was just have this sonic boom, with a flash, and have the level change on you instantly. We just couldn’t manage it on the hardware, though, so instead there’s that sequence that plays while it’s loading. (laughs) I kept fighting and fighting with the programmers, but they said it just wasn’t possible.
Gamasutra: I bet they probably could have done it.
Ohshima: I know! (laughs) If Naka was doing the programming, I think it could’ve been done.
Speaking of Yuji Naka, the designer also spoke of how his team worked in Japan on Sonic CD in tandem with Naka’s SEGA Technical Institute in the U.S. on Sonic 2.
We exchanged information, of course, talking about the sort of game design each of us was aiming for. But Sonic CD wasn’t Sonic 2; it was really meant to be more of a CD version of the original Sonic. I can’t help but wonder, therefore, if we had more fun making CD than they did making Sonic 2 [because we didn’t have the pressure of making a “numbered sequel”].
Sonic the Hedgehog’s original design came up again, with discussion of how the character was created for the American market leading to questions of Sonic’s iconic blue, red and white colours. Ohshima said that, as we know, the blue was to symbolise SEGA, but what was more interesting was yet another tenuous link between Michael Jackson and the blue blur. Apparently Sonic’s shoes are directly inspired by Jackson’s Bad album cover. “I also thought that red went well for a character who can run really fast, when his legs are spinning.”
Naoto Ohshima left SEGA many years ago to lead Artoon, but now has management duties at sister development studio Cavia, which recently finished Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles and is working on Square Enix’s Nier. But with this change in approach to more Western, adult-oriented games, does Oshima still have time in his life to go back to the mascot platforming gig?
Ah, well, I’m making a game like that right now. (laughs) I can’t quite talk about that yet, though. In more general terms, the game needs to be something that anyone is able to play, and it needs to have one thing or element that is brand new, that hasn’t been done before.
Shine on, you legend. Shine on.
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You like artwork, right? You like the look of Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing, yeah? Well check out this batch of new, clean PNG artwork for the game, featuring character art, level art and the game’s logo.
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The word is spreading about Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing, and the press machine is in overdrive. As a result, new screenshots! There are six Wii screens, five DS shots and eight PS3 screens to enjoy in the S&SASR Screenshots section.
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One of the last remaining disputes hanging around the Sonic community has been the ‘did he, didn’t he’ surrounding Michael Jackson’s supposed involvement in Sonic 3’s soundtrack. Turns out such rumours have been well and truly confirmed, as a French MJ tribute magazine, Black and White, spoke to fellow composer Brad Buxer about his involvement in the game.
I’ve never played the game so I do not know what tracks on which Michael and I have worked the developers have kept, but we did compose music for the game. Michael called me at the time for help on this project, and that’s what I did.
Brad Buxer is a well known collaborator with Jackson on several projects, and his appearance in Sonic 3’s credits suggested that perhaps the King of Pop had a hand in music creation as well. But Jackson’s name does not appear in the credits, perhaps using an alias or even removing himself from public knowledge at all. Buxer explains:
If he is not credited for composing the music, it’s because he was not happy with the result sound coming out of the console. At the time, game consoles did not allow an optimal sound reproduction, and Michael found it frustrating. He did not want to be associated with a product that devalued his music…
It was also revealed that the links between the Sonic 3 Credits theme and Jackson hit Stranger In Moscow do share the same beat because the former was used as the base for the latter.
Several months after Michael Jackson’s untimely passing, his deep roots with the SEGA of the 1990s has been truly revealed, allowing us to respect a great artist’s work even more. Thanks to Sonic Retro for the posting of this news, and to Silva Rymes for sending us a tip (which we noticed after we posted this – sorry!).
Update: ArchAngelUK has informed us that there is specific mention of Michael Jackson on Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, under the Sonic 3 ‘Museum’ section.
Upon inspection, the March 2009 compilation confirms nothing of Jackson’s actual contribution, only that he “was originally going to be” composing. In fact, the exact wording of the phrase implies an outright denial of Jackson’s eventual involvement. Buxer’s comments in the Black & White magazine almost negate the Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection reference entirely by confirming Jackson was in fact involved after all.
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We’re kick-starting our revival of the Game Archive in fashion, by opening the pages to the upcoming Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing. The Game Profile page is online, allowing you to view a summary of the game and read up on collected trivia about the game so far. Over time we will add new information pages, as they all focus on different aspects of the game (Gameplay and Zones, for instance). Enjoy.
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SEGA has announced that Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games has already sold 250,000 copies in the UK, with a 24% sales increase last week on the back of a new marketing push, outlined below.
Since launching on the 16th October, the game has held fast in the Top 10 and currently ranks #7 in the Chart Track Official UK Game Charts. SEGA’s Marketing Director John Clark said to MCV that the mascot mashup is a good contender for Christmas #1.
Just like the Summer Olympics before it, SEGA is going for a huge marketing push in the UK to advertise Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games. The blitz will be the company’s biggest ever ad campaign, covering prime time and children’s TV, cinema exposure and physical presence in public spaces.
Hyde Park will receive the most of SEGA’s goodwill, sponsoring the Winter Wonderland that is currently taking place at the venue. A Mario and Sonic branded ice rink will be established and an area to play the game will be nearby to capture passing consumers. Open until 4th January 2010, Hyde Park alone is expected to drive a total of two million visitors to skate and play the game.
Elsewhere, Mario and Sonic will be sponsoring ITV’s breakfast programming bloc, GMTV, and its children’s weekend counterpart, Toonatik, until 10th January 2010. M&S adverts will feature in between these shows, as well as prime time ITV programmes such as The X Factor, Coronation Street and I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here! Thirty second spots continue to appear in cinemas for moviegoers watching Where The Wild Things Are as well.
If that wasn’t enough, SEGA is splashing out on shopping mall marketing as well – this will run up to Christmas and will include posters and HD screens (most likely showcasing game footage).
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As you can probably tell, we’re having a bit of an Artwork revival session at the moment. Here’s a restoration of all the images from TSS for Sonic Chaos’ official artwork.
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See some of the awesome Sonic the Hedgehog CD artwork in a restoration of TSS’ archive of images.
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Not many here, we know, but still. Sonic Blast had some artwork, and it’s with some excitement that we relaunch our old archive of artwork on TSS today.
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Check out the boldly-outlined artwork of Sonic Battle, now restored on The Sonic Stadium.
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More artwork added to the archive, this time from Sonic Advance 3.
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Take a trip down memory lane with the re-addition of TSS’ Sonic Advance 2 Art section.
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Find TSS’ collection of Sonic Advance artwork restored on our archive.
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Hey guys! My new job is somewhat stopping me from doing huge updates to the site unfortunately, so sorry about that. But the awesome efforts from T-Bird, Brad, Shadz, Paul and nuckles87 are hopefully all providing you with the news and Sonic info you need. But we’re always looking for stuff to write about. We love Sonic as much as you do, so if you have anything you want us to talk about – be it a news tip that we haven’t covered yet, your fan project or anything else Sonic related – give us a buzz via our Contact page.
Speaking of which, I’ve fixed it up a bit. People have been wanting to come to us to submit their Sonic news, info or community projects, and it’s been a bit confusing how to go about it. I’ve taken the liberty to fix that for you. There’s a direct link to our email address – thesonicstadium@gmail.com – on the sidebar and the Contact Us page has been edited to display it as well.
Please do get in touch if you have something Sonic-related that we can chat about on The Sonic Stadium. Of course, I’ve still included TSS Staff emails in the Contact page, just in case you want to email a specific staffer of your news.
Also, if you want to let us know about your Sonic fansite, then give us a buzz! We want to start a weekly (or otherwise regular) section writing about and getting exposure for all the fansites in the Community. We’re also looking to bringing back the TSS Banner Rotation service soon, exclusively for fansites and other non-commercial websites alike. So there will be more ways for your site to be recognised by the community. Continue reading Get In Touch With The Sonic Stadium
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When Sonic fans learned of the epic teaming up with bitter 90s rival Mario in 2007, tongues salivated at the possibilities. Just what kind of game could be made from a Mario and Sonic game? Imagine the disappointment when, following Sonic’s appearance in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, that the resulting product would be a sports-influenced party game instead. Despite the somewhat unwarranted vitriol (one might argue that a platform game would be even more blasphemous to both franchises), Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games was honest fun with friends and family.
Two years on, and the IOC (the board that runs the Olympics) are clearly wanting to milk this cash cow as much as SEGA. And who can blame them – the 2007 hit remained high in the charts for well over a year, and outsold Nintendo’s own Super Mario Galaxy handily to boot. A Winter Games edition was inevitable. Vancouver, Canada is the setting for our licensed heroes this time, and SEGA has been more than keen to take better advantage of the Sonic and Mario franchises. Does it retain the same Christmas holiday fun as the last Olympic Games? Continue reading TSS Review: Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games
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Sonic and SEGA All-Stars Racing’s Executive Producer, Steve Lycett, has written a post on SEGA Europe’s official blog discussing the upcoming mascot racing game. Although mostly an introductory post, Lycett mentions the genesis of the game, which was staged very much like Sonic R as opposed to Sonic Drift.
“We started off with… Sonic running. Yes running. Not in a car. Not Super Sonic, but Sonic running full pelt around a test track.” Lycett revealed on the SEGA blog, “Next we added Eggman, riding in his Eggpod, but with robotic legs attached. He was running too. Then we added Tails. He was in his Tornado, the red biplane from Sonic 2. Next, we thought ‘It’s a racing game, lets try a car’ and dropped in Amy, in a nice bright pink Amymobile.”
Other characters included Gilius Thunderhead from Golden Axe, riding atop a Chicken Leg creature. Despite how awesome this setup sounds, Lycett tells of development difficulties in maintaining the flow of gameplay.
…It wasn’t all that much fun to play. Our main problem was that all the characters were different sizes. Sonic was Sonic sized, but he was really small compared to Eggman and Gilius on their rides. Worse still was Tails’ Tornado – it was huge! The wings made it really wide.
Coders at Sumo managing to make Amy’s car drift threw up even more possibilities, hampered by the difficulty in giving Sonic a drift function on foot. “How do you get a Hedgehog to drift [like Amy’s car]? Worse still, how do you get dwarf in full battle armour on a parrot faced lizard to drift?”
And hence, the result is everyone in a vehicle, as you see here. Lycett humorously asks fans angry about putting Sonic in a vehicle to direct their venom at the creators of Sonic Drift, but also throws down this final nugget of information, hinting at how the planes will handle in Sonic and SEGA All-Stars Racing:
For the flyers we didn’t want them to have too much of an unfair advantage, so we decided to treat these like hovercraft, they wouldn’t be affected by surfaces that slow the other cars down, but they also wouldn’t have high acceleration. As such Tails’ plane needed a re-design.
Interesting stuff. You can read the whole blog entry at SEGA’s Blognik.
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Learn more about the recently released compilation album from Jun Senoue in the Music Soundtracks section.
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We’ve restored the Videos Archive for Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Gasp in wonder at the underground travelling television! Laugh at the Japanese-English phrase “Welcome to Sonic Land”! Learn new things as you discover that the plastic case really can fit into any tackle box.
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With nearly 1,300 individual votes for this year’s Sonic Site Awards event, it’s providing exciting results! If you have not taken the time to visit the sites nominated and cast your vote, you still have time to do so – you have until the 6th December 2009!
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Slowly updating the Sonic and SEGA All-Stars Racing Screenshots page by adding 4 Wii version screengrabs. When you click on the screen to see in full-size, the caption will clearly explain if it is a Wii screenshot or not.
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Remember the Summer of Sonic convention this year? Loads of people singing their hearts out to Live & Learn, Open Your Heart and, erm, The Palace That Was Found. Singing was even more apparent at last year’s event. But now the convention’s over, how are you going to express your Sonical singing skills to the community? Good job AAUK’s Wrecks Factor is at hand, otherwise you might explode from all the contained musical feeling within.
Hosted by Sonic Wrecks, the Wrecks Factor allows anyone and everyone to choose a Sonic song and do some karaoke. There’s usually a contest for All-Comers, and a contest for All-Stars (senior community members). Each year a theme is attached – in 2008 it was duets, this time AAUK’s enforcing the ‘Darkspeeds Rule’. Write your own lyrics to a Sonic song and sing them proud and well!
Sound like a challenge you’d like to take up? You can head to the Wrecks Factor page here and inform AAUK of your interest. Get your entries to the man by the 19th December 2009, with judging taking place February 2010. Just ignore the fact that I lost two years in a row. The judges back then just didn’t understand sardonic quality. 😉
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As part of the site’s rebuilding of the Videos section, we’ve brought back all of the movie files we kept a hold of from yesteryear. Two gameplay videos – including an awesome tool-assisted speedrun – and two TV commercials line up the archive for the original Sonic the Hedgehog.
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A spooky trailer that was released especially for Hallowe’en. Reveals some Curien Mansion stuff and zombie gameplay. Download the video from the direct link or watch it via the Youtube link.
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First4Figures has posted these teaser images on its Facebook page, challenging their readers to guess what new model is currently in production. Judging by the images, all signs point to a classic Metal Sonic figurine. Of course, First4Figures isn’t saying anything right now, and the company has been known to make figures based on other computer game franchises such as Zelda and Metroid, so it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s Sonic related.
But still, doesn’t that look insanely similar to Metal Sonic’s head, or what?
No other information – release date, price – is known about the upcoming product. TSS has contacted First4Figures for more information on when this new model will be fully revealed.
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You might have noticed that it’s a bit of a lull period for Sonic news and fresh information at the moment. Certainly, the side-effect is somewhat adverse for some. But rather than flap our gums, we’re knuckling down during this silent season and beefing up TSS’ resources. This morning (before work, natch – I’m actually working right now, I time-locked this post so it will publish at now rather than two hours ago – great huh) I have managed to re-open our Videos section! Now that’s useful!
Only thing is, there’s literally one video in there at the moment – Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing’s Hallowe’en Trailer. You can still download it by heading to the links on the sidebar, then going to the particular game section. Or you can simply watch it on Youtube, if downloading’s not entirely your thing.
I plan on doing this with the huge backlog of videos I have round here – I’ve started to think that there’s so many little things I can add to the site, that doing a huge whopping site post for them all every time I add a new vid isn’t going to be efficient for us, or you who want to read an array of different content on the front page. So I’m working on an ‘updates’ ticker of sorts. It’ll essentially be a quicklist of new content we’ve added, linking to the relevant page. I’ll probably slap it in the sidebar, and give it its own RSS feed too so those who want to know every little detail can sign up. How does that sound?
In the meantime, enjoy the video/incoming videos, and I’ll have more content ready. Likely during my lunch break. Am I good to you or what?
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SEGA Japan’s new online store is currently taking orders for the upcoming compilation CD, “True Colors 2: The Best of Sonic the Hedgehog – Part 2”. The release – one of three CDs that Jun Senoue is producing – is going for ￥2,500, which works out at about £16.70. The record won’t be on sale officially until the 16th December 2009.
You can order the title from SEGA’s Ebten store (their replacement for their dedicated SEGA Direct online service), or alternatively Amazon’s Japan website (click for translation) is selling the CD for the same price and is likely to ship overseas.
Amazon’s website reveals a portion of the tracklist that we can expect to find on the record, which includes themes from Sonic Adventure 2’s “Throw It All Away” and E-102 Gamma’s theme from Sonic Adventure. An original demo version of “Lazy Days”, a new remix of “Dreams of an Absolution” and a Hybrid Mix of “All Hail Shadow” featuring Magna-Fi’s Mike Szuter is also revealed.
Sounds like a pretty special tracklist, for sure. Who’s interested in getting a copy once December hits?
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About time, I hear you moan. Alright alright, shut up, I’ve had a busy week of it. 😛 Anyway, as you can probably tell by the title of this update, the second phase of this year’s Sonic Site Awards is now OPEN! Click here to be taken straight to the voting page. We had a hell of a lot of submissions this year, so thank you for all of your interest – unfortunately only five nominees can be considered worthy of the title for each category, so apologies if you didn’t get through – it just means you have everything to work for in next year’s contest!
You have until the end of play 6th December 2009 to cast your vote. Can I be a bit of a penis and politely ask everyone to at least visit all of the nominations for each category? These guys have put their back into making their websites and this event is all about awarding great work that might not get seen for all the TSS’ and Sonic Retro’s out there. Take the time to click the links, surf about, see what each site’s like, and contact the webmasters and let ’em know your thoughts if you like. This community is all about sharing, and if we can’t share just a moment of our time what’s the point of it all?
The winners, in traditional SSA fashion, won’t be revealed until a special Awards broadcast that takes place on SEGASonic Radio. That means you won’t even know who’s winning at the moment until the big day. It’s all a mystery! Suspense! Drama (the good kind)! Intrigue! It’s fun, isn’t it?
Good luck to our nominees!
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James Richards successfully earned a Guinness World Record for completing Sonic the Hedgehog 2’s Emerald Hill Zone Act 1 in the fastest time. The only problem was, that fastest time was 22 seconds, a whole two seconds shorter than a time officially achieved at the Summer of Sonic convention in 2008. So, what gives?
Gaz Deaves, who was the adjudicator on the Summer of Sonic 2008 Sonic 2 time, explained to The Sonic Stadium that it was a matter of console configuration. James’ record was achieved on an Xbox 360, while Louis Tsiattalou (SoS 2008 record holder) used a Sega Mega Drive. The differences are more significant than you might think, says Deaves:
Bearing in mind the differences between controllers (remember, the Megadrive has 3 useable buttons which allow for faster spin-boosting if used correctly) I’m not convinced 20 seconds is even possible on a current-gen console (but would love to be proven wrong!). James may be in danger, though, as I’ve already had an unauthenticated claim from a guy who says he can consistently pull off 21-second runs on PS3 and Xbox 360.
So that’s that. The main point of contention for some was whether Louis’ record, a faster time despite the apparent difference in configuration, would be dumped for the slower record just because it was a newer attempt, at a higher profile event sponsored by an energy drink. Having something like that muscle out a bona fide achievement accomplished by dedicated Sonic fans would be pretty damning. But Deaves says that all awards get phased out of the book anyway as a matter of keeping things fresh;
The content of the book is never sponsored or paid for – what goes in is always based on what we think is interesting for the reader rather than brand exposure for Lucozade or Nintendo or anyone else for that matter.
As it happens, I don’t think either Louis or James will be featured in the 2010 Gamer’s Edition: we went to press on Thursday last week so there’s no chance of James’ 22-second run getting in. Plus, we don’t feature every record every year (we need to do this to make room for new records) and I’m pretty sure Louis’ time hasn’t been featured in this one. Although, I do know we included a speed run of the Wyle[sic] Coyote-inspired Sonic clone Desert Demolition for Megadrive (dunno if you remember that one?)
Sure, Wile. E’s alright, but it’s just not the same. Deaves notes that he attempted to contact current record holder Louis to defend his title on the Xbox 360, but received no response. Louis, what are you waiting for?
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Those of you with nothing better to watch on TV tonight (let’s face it, it’s all pretty crap this year) can do worse than watch some live Internet TV, courtesy of our video brethren The Sonic Show. The event? Jay (aka DiscoPonies) is painting his room, all Sonical like. You can even comment on the uStream page that it resides on and try and convince him not to draw a huge penis on that Buzzbomber he’s already painted up there.
Seriously, as I write this progress is pretty good in Jay’s room – the characters are starting to look really awesome in white outlines. Hm. I’m starting to think that we’ve hit Big Brother territory for some reason, what with writing about what someone’s doing in their own house and all. But hey, Jay’s publicising himself, he’s asking for the attention!
Watch the painting – complete with more dancing and gurning, no doubt – here.
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Sonic Team legend and Sonic the Hedgehog co-creator, Naoto Ohshima, 
One of the last remaining disputes hanging around the Sonic community has been the ‘did he, didn’t he’ surrounding Michael Jackson’s supposed involvement in Sonic 3’s soundtrack. Turns out such rumours have been well and truly confirmed, as a French MJ tribute magazine, 
SEGA has announced that Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games has already sold 250,000 copies in the UK, with a 24% sales increase last week on the back of a new marketing push, outlined below.
Hey guys! My new job is somewhat stopping me from doing huge updates to the site unfortunately, so sorry about that. But the awesome efforts from T-Bird, Brad, Shadz, Paul and nuckles87 are hopefully all providing you with the news and Sonic info you need. But we’re always looking for stuff to write about. We love Sonic as much as you do, so if you have anything you want us to talk about – be it a news tip that we haven’t covered yet, your fan project or anything else Sonic related – give us a buzz via our Contact page.
Sonic and SEGA All-Stars Racing’s Executive Producer, Steve Lycett, 
