Features – The Sonic Stadium

2nd April 202311th March 2024

Announced today on their Twitter account, the Sonic Amateur Games Expo returns from September 1st to the 8th. Along with the announcement came a logo by Pixy-Pie and a short video with a jingle by R3tron.

For those not in the know, the Sonic Amateur Games Expo allows amateur game developers to show off their Sonic fan games and demos alongside some other projects showing a wide range of different gameplay styles.

For more information and to check out last year’s games, check out the official SAGE website.

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Sonic Is Dead And So Is E3 – Hedgelines for Apr. 2, 2023

This week in Hedgelines: Sonic Origins Plus, Sonic cameos in Upcoming SEGA games, and we’re not kidding when we say there’s a new Sonic game out now.

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Sonic on the eShop: What Will Be Lost on March 27

22nd March 202311th March 2024

19th March 202311th March 2024

Sonic has a pretty long history with Nintendo. The franchise first went third party on Nintendo platforms, and has stuck close to the company’s hardware ever since. This held true even during the Wii U era (easily Nintendo’s most difficult time in recent memory), giving the dual-screen console and the 3DS a variety of Sonic exclusives, ports and retro titles.

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TailsTube Lore & Weird Toys – HedgeLines Mar. 11, 2023 – Sonic News Update

This week: The latest TailsTube, First4 Tails Preorders, and some very strange Sonic Prime toys.

Features, Video

HedgeLines – Weekly News Recap – Mar. 11, 2023

11th March 202311th March 2024

This week in HedgeLines: Kids Choice Awards, First4Figures, and Shadow in IDW.

Need to catch up on Sonic news in just a few minutes? Jump into HedgeLines, our rapid recap of this week in news!

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HedgeLines – Weekly News Recap – Mar. 4, 2023

4th March 202311th March 2024

This week in HedgeLines: SEGASonic Cosmo Fighter, IDW’s hand-painted cover, and plenty of Sonic Channel art.

Features

The Top Sonic GBA Games We Want To See on Nintendo Switch Online

18th February 202311th March 2024

12th February 202311th March 2024

Nintendo surprised everyone during its recent Nintendo Direct showcase, by announcing the launch of a Game Boy Advance suite of games for subscribers of its Nintendo Switch Online (Expansion Pack) service. Not only was the GBA a short-lived but stunning little system, but its game library available for it is packed with some of the most excellent portable experiences you could find.

Naturally, as soon as the GBA NSO app was revealed, gaming fans around the world began speculating about what kind of games could appear on the service. Well, at the Sonic Stadium we’re not above some entertaining wish-listing, and given that Nintendo’s purple little portable was home to several fantastic Sonic the Hedgehog games, we felt the time was right to hype up the best of those games and hope that SEGA offers us a chance to replay these on modern console/s.

So here it is; our breakdown of all the Sonic (and Sonic Team, for good measure) games on GBA that we most want to see on the Nintendo Switch Online service (or alternatively, on some kind of special compilation developed by SEGA). It’s quite hard to rank these games because almost all of them (well, all except one really) were very entertaining in their own right, and honestly speaking we’d ask to have all of the below games (well, all except one) re-introduced to Switch in some way or another.

10: Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis

Yeah, this is the exception we mentioned before. Sonic the Hedgehog: Genesis was an attempt at a 16-Bit Sonic the Hedgehog remake on Nintendo’s handheld console, and it absolutely stank. Only released in North America, and for good reason, a number of small quality of life improvements in a spin dash and save feature couldn’t offset the glitches, awful music reproduction and inexplicable sluggishness of its core gameplay. This was a 15th Anniversary celebration gone horribly wrong.

We’d probably only want to see it on NSO as a curiosity, and even then let’s make sure all the other games in this list have been added first.

9: Tiny Chao Garden

This is more of a micro-game than a full-blown boxed GBA release, but we think it counts! Tiny Chao Garden was included in most Sonic GBA titles (including all of the Sonic Advance games), but was also a standalone app that could be temporarily installed into your GBA’s memory (just don’t turn it off!). It was a means for players to transfer their A-Life Chao creatures from Sonic Adventure 2 Battle and Sonic Adventure DX on Nintendo Gamecube onto Game Boy Advance, so that they could raise and nurture their little racer/fighter on the go.

An obviously cut-down version of the overall Chao raising experience, it offered a couple of minigames you could play with your Chao for in-game currency, as well as the ability to purchase food and various items for your little buddy to interact with.

While we did really enjoy using the Tiny Chao Garden where it was available at the time, it’s really best used when transferring Chao from GBA to Gamecube for short periods. And given that transfer functionality is unlikely to be included in any NSO app re-release – on top of the fact that it’s already included as a side-game in the Sonic Advance games – we don’t really see much value in its separate inclusion.

8: Puyo Pop

Sonic Team was busy throughout the Game Boy Advance’s lifecycle. Not only were they working with Dimps on many of the Sonic Advance titles, but they also had a hand in developing the Puyo Puyo games, thanks to a studio re-organisation at SEGA at the time. Puyo Pop was the first such title under Sonic Team’s production, and one of the first unashamedly ‘Puyo’ games to reach the West.

If you’ve played Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine, you’ll know what the score is here. Little coloured blobs drop down, Tetris-style, into your play window, and you must arrange them by matching at least four of the same colour to make them disappear (or send ‘junk’ blobs to your opponent’s play window). It’s a puzzle game that’s stood the test of time, and wholly addictive fun. We think there’d be value in letting a puzzle game like this run wild on NSO’s GBA app.

7: Puyo Pop Fever

Following the toe-dip in the water that was Puyo Pop, Sonic Team followed up with a full-on head dunk with Puyo Pop Fever. This was a hyper version of the blob-matching original, with a very vibrant presentation featuring anime characters doing battle at a weird Puyo magic school (or something), vying to be top of the class. Gameplay-wise this entry introduced new mechanics such as different Puyo shape combinations and a ‘Fever’ mode that allowed players a chance to build up some combo-clears that would send your opponents packing.

It’s a much more engaging sequel to play over the first Puyo Pop title, so if there was a choice between the two games to include on NSO, we’d plump for Amitie and crew here.

6: ChuChu Rocket!

ChuChu Rocket! was originally a surprise release from Sonic Team on the Dreamcast – a quick and furious party game of (space) cat and (space) mouse which was developed to highlight the SEGA home console’s innovative online gaming functionalities. For something that was essentially a hobby project for Yuji Naka and co, we thought it was a one-hit wonder at the time, until 2001 when a Game Boy Advance version was announced.

The core gameplay loop is extraordinary fun with three friends – each player has to lay down arrows to try and direct a stream of mice into their space rocket, while also directing cats (which eat the mice and wipe out your score if scuttled aboard your vessel) to your opponents’. There is also a slower-paced but cerebrally-challenging Puzzle mode which was so addictive it ensured the game stayed in your console.

On Game Boy Advance, much of the manic action is maintained – the main differences being that the polygonal graphics are replaced with sprites, and instead of the Dreamcast’s online play the multiplayer was limited to game link cables. With NSO’s GBA app allowing for online link-up play, we think there would be some weirdly poetic sense to offering this engaging game for a whole new generation.

5: Sonic Pinball Party

Now we’re getting to the real Sonic games on the system, and we’re starting with a decent pinball spinoff that not only features Sonic the Hedgehog, but Sonic Team favourites NiGHTS and Samba de Amigo as well. Sonic Pinball Party, unlike Sonic Spinball before it, takes a rather conventional approach to the flipper game, opting to have players running standard steel balls against themed tables.

It wasn’t really a game that held your interest for very long, as you could see everything on offer within a short few hours, but there was enough charm in the table environments and fun gimmicks to be worth several return plays. Just don’t go into the Story mode for anything really meaningful, it’s a load of old tripe. But you know, any excuse to see Sonic, NiGHTS and Amigo share the spotlight – probably the first and last time that will ever happen.

There will no doubt be other pinball-themed candidates that Nintendo will want to put on the GBA NSO service before Sonic Pinball Party, but if SEGA drags its heels over revisiting the core Sonic Advance series this would be a pretty easy get while we waited for the primo stuff.

4: Sonic Advance 2

We absolutely adored Sonic’s second handheld adventure on Game Boy Advance, when it was first released. Giving it full marks in our review at the time due to its super-fast action, original zone environments and stylish new moves that worked with the level design to make you feel like a boss as you air tricked to upper routes.

The game has lost a little bit of that shine over the years, with repeat plays revealing some frustrations with the rather straightforward stage maps and little opportunity for traditional Sonic-style exploration. Not to mention the frustrating approach to Chaos Emerald collection (even if the Special Stages themselves are pretty cool). But with a banging soundtrack, excellent presentation and some nice unlockable bonuses, this is still worth a play for the dedicated Sonic fan.

Because the Sonic Advance trilogy was originally published in the West by not-SEGA (THQ in the US, Infogrames in Europe), it’s difficult to know whether we will see these games appear on NSO’s GBA app due to the possible additional licensing involved. If SEGA is smart, they’d have found a way to regain sole publishing ownership of these games. But if not, there’s still a chance they could appear on the Japanese NSO service, given all three were previously released on Wii U’s GBA Virtual Console.

3: Sonic Advance 3

The third and final entry in the Sonic Advance series mixed things up a bit with a new ‘tag’ system that allowed players to use two characters at once and combine their abilities. It was extremely gimmicky, but paid off better than a similar execution in its home console spiritual cousin, Sonic Heroes.

With more sensible pacing, intricate level design and an interesting plot to boot, Sonic Advance 3 ends up becoming a little more engaging than its predecessor in the long term, and we’d love to get the chance to blast through Sunset Hill and Cyber Track once again.

2: Sonic Advance

We know the first Sonic Advance game is the slowest of all three in the series, but we feel that it has stood the test of time a lot better than its sequels. Although the animations on Sonic, Tails and friends are a little stuffy by today’s standards (we’re really not sure about the look of that run, Sonic), everything else about this game channels the very essence of the classic 16-bit Sonic adventures to the letter.

The multi-tiered stage design, the inertia and pacing, the music, the boss fights… everything here just feels correct in a way that Sonic Advance 2 and 3 couldn’t quite match (or in some cases, over-egged). And for the first Sonic outing on a Nintendo platform, this remains a perfect introduction. What we wouldn’t give to experience the atmosphere of Egg Rocket once again on a modern console. That soundtrack and sunset, man.

1: Sonic Battle

As much as we love the Sonic Advance series, there’s one Sonic the Hedgehog title that we would describe as ‘iconic’ on the Game Boy Advance, and that game would be Sonic Battle. A spinoff that is packed full of style, story and (literally) kick-ass gameplay, Battle was a portable fighting game that takes a lot of cues from the Super Smash Bros series while introducing a uniquely fresh ‘Sonic’ twist. And it was executed to perfection.

While the moveset for each character may seem limiting by today’s standards, at the time it was a great use of the GBA’s control system, allowing for special moves that really took advantage of each characters’ specific traits. What’s more, the Story mode had you befriend a robot called Emerl, who you could customise and upgrade skills for during fights.

Every pixel in this game just oozes ‘cool’, from the art direction to the creative 3D environments to the unusually-intense story mode, which contains a lot more canonical easter eggs than you’d expect. With the NSO GBA app offering the ability to replace link-cable multiplayer with online play, getting Sonic Battle on the Nintendo service would be a no-brainer and absolutely the first thing we’d ask SEGA and Nintendo for.

Honourable Mention – Sonic X: A Super Sonic Hero

There’s one other Sonic-related product that was released on the Game Boy Advance, and we would be remiss to not include it in this list in some fashion. The reason we can’t really rank it in the same way as the others is that it’s not strictly a game; as the name suggests, ‘Sonic X: A Super Sonic Hero’ was a GBA Video cartridge release that contained two episodes of the 2003 animated series (‘Chaos Control Freaks’ and ‘Sonic to the Rescue’).

It’s a strange product because SEGA wasn’t really involved. Majesco developed and produced the short-running GBA Video series, including this Sonic X release, using its proprietary video encoding techniques and software. There’s really no reason to want this on Nintendo’s subscription service as there are other means to watch the anime, and licensing right aplenty would mean that its inclusion would be pretty far-fetched anyway.

Still, it’s a nice little curio and worth getting for a collector’s piece.

Well, what do you think of our lineup? Do you agree with the order of this list? What would you change? Let us know in the comments section below! And let’s all cross our fingers for all (or at least, some) of these games to appear on Nintendo Switch Online’s GBA app (or even better, a modern console compilation release)!

Features, Video

HedgeLines – Weekly News Recap – Feb. 11, 2023

It’s more than chili dogs cooking in our first episode!

Features

Sonic Year in Review 2022: A Banner Year for a New Generation of Sonic

31st December 202212th April 2024

24th November 202212th April 2024

The end of 2022 is now upon us. And boy, what a year it has been! After spending Sonic’s 30th Anniversary mostly waiting for trailers, watching online events and experiencing strange mobile crossovers, it finally feels like this year has been the big global celebration of the blue blur that the decades-long franchise fully deserved.

Features, Opinion

Sonic Frontiers Marks a Paradigm Shift in Sonic Game Storytelling

17th November 202212th April 2024

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Editor’s Note: MASSIVE STORY SPOILERS are in this article.

I loved Sonic game stories when I was a kid. I loved their bigness, the way they gave the game world a sense of history and tragedy. As someone who hadn’t yet played any JRPGs, they were unlike anything I had ever experienced in a game before. It was so cool being taken into the past and seeing Knuckles’ people, the chaos emeralds and the strange creature that once protected them, the young echidna girl who befriended that creature, and the tragic way it all ended. And while Sonic Adventure 2’s story didn’t dig nearly as deep into the world’s past, I loved the tragedy of Shadow, Maria, and Gerald, the mysteriousness surrounding the Ark and its own connections to Chaos and the emeralds, and how it ended with everyone coming together and putting a stop to a sympathetic revenge plot 50 years in the making. That was then, of course.

These days, it’s much more difficult for me to enjoy those stories without rose-tinted glasses. And the stories that came after…never held the same magic for me. Heroes, Shadow, Sonic 06 were all terrible, and on the rare occasion they weren’t (such as the Rush games) they felt smaller. Maybe I was growing out of them, but I think the real answer is far simpler: Sonic’s stories never had cohesion or direction from game to game, and that ultimately caused them to fall apart. But just as Sonic games were hitting what felt like their narrative low point with Sonic the Hedgehog 2006, I was in the midst of being enthralled by Archie Sonic’s newest headwriter: Ian Flynn.

Flynn worked some absolute magic with that comic. I had been a reader since 1995, but by 2006 I had dropped the comics due to my displeasure with where the stories were going. Ian Flynn managed to impress with his very first issue, 160, and from that point on he rarely produced a dud throughout his run. Over the course of a year, he repaired years of damage done to the comic’s narrative. He recontextualized poorly written characterization, retroactively turning it into part of a character’s arc, or using it to fuel drama that simultaneously makes it feel in-character and gives it a satisfying conclusion. Sonic, Tails, and Sally were all major benefactors of this, but nearly everyone in the comic’s cast got a moment.

Archie Tails had been on the receiving end of some bad stories for a few years before this

I hadn’t seen these characters written this well in years, and I felt like I was welcoming old friends home. “Why can’t the games be written like this?” I began to ask myself, “Why can’t they just hire Ian Flynn?” Extraordinarily, 15 years later, I have finally gotten my wish. And just as I had hoped, Ian Flynn has done the same thing for the games that he did for the comics all those years ago. Sonic and company are back. No, scratch that: they have finally arrived.

Sonic Frontiers is easily the most well-written Sonic game I’ve ever played. The dialogue has that patented Flynn charm, with solid interactions between Sonic and everyone he comes into contact with. We’ve got genuinely funny jokes, extraordinarily well-written heart-felt moments, and an overall tone that can still be light, but is often quite somber. On top of all that, every character aside from Sonic himself gets some sort of arc.

Character arcs have never really been a strong suit of Sonic games. While they certainly happen, they can often be poorly written and are only occasionally well-executed. That Frontiers has five of them, and that they are mostly well done, is certainly a feat. They each leave the characters in a different place from where they’ve been for years, or even decades.

At the start, everyone is more or less where you’d expect them to be. Amy and Tails are tagging along with Sonic, Dr. Eggman is focused purely on his next take-over-the-world scheme, and Knuckles just wants to guard the Master Emerald. Over the course of the game, through their interactions with the Koco and Sonic, Amy, Tails and Knuckles all go through a change. The Kocos, which are essentially spirits of an ancient race trapped and troubled by the struggles they faced before death, act as conduits for character development, their arcs reflecting the struggles of Sonic’s friends.

Amy, who was once long characterized by her one-sided love-affair with Sonic, is driven to help a Koco find their lost love. By the end of it, she sees a love that transcended time, and decides she needs to share her own love with the world by going on her own adventure away from Sonic. Knuckles helps an army of Kocos trying to fight “the enemy.” Upon witnessing the destruction of their civilization he makes the connection between the Koco and his own people’s tragic past. For the first time I can recall, Knuckles expresses genuine regret over his lonely lot in life as the last of his kind. Sonic pulls him out of his funk by reminding him that he’s got his friends, leading to a truly heartfelt conversation that ends in Knuckles deciding to try out Sonic’s more adventurous lifestyle. Finally, we have Tails, who’s Koco…basically experiences Tails’ story in Sonic Forces. Yeah: this game’s story decides to deal with Tails’ worst moments in the franchise.

I think it’s fair to say the games haven’t really done much with Tails since the original Sonic Adventure, which saw him overcoming his fears, facing down Eggman, and saving Station Square from him. Since then…Tails has more or less remained static, rarely leaving Sonic’s side after Sonic Adventure 2 and more or less returning to the “sidekick who follows him around” role. But then we had Forces, where we go from character stagnation to character regression. Here, Tails “lost it” after Sonic’s defeat and Eggman’s near total takeover of the planet, something which effectively reversed one of the only bits of development Tails ever got.

So when it came time for Frontiers to give Tails his arc, Flynn pulled the same hat trick that worked so well in Archie: he took Tails’ decades of stagnation, his low point in Forces, and the many times he came through and melded it all together into Tails’ growth into a hero. This all ends up giving him the strongest and most defined arc in the game, and the plot’s best moments. Tails’ entire arc is him dealing with the fact that despite the strides he’s taken to be his own hero, he still messes up and can still fall back into his own comfort zone. Tails essentially experiences imposter syndrome, ignoring everything he’s done to earn his place by Sonic’s because all he can think about are his own mistakes.

This just feels so right for Tails, a character who started out as a lonely bullied kid. It makes him feel more human and complex, something I don’t think I’ve ever seen in a Sonic game character before. The best and most interesting character arcs are the messy ones, the ones where characters get to mess up, regress, relearn lessons, and genuinely struggle to become the better version of themselves they want to be. With Tails’ arc put in that context, it effortlessly became the best part of Frontiers’ narrative. And what’s really wild is that this simply wouldn’t be possible without Forces’ terrible, terrible story.

Outside of Sonic’s friends, the most well-defined arc in this game belongs to Dr. Eggman’s AI creation, Sage. While her arc is pretty thin and the weakest part of the entire game, she is able to do one thing no other Eggman companion has: bring out a different side of him. Indeed, I’d say one of Sonic Frontiers other major accomplishments is showing us a side of Eggman we’ve only gotten brief glimpses of before within the games.

Dr. Eggman isn’t just a guy with designs of world conquest, after all. He is a world class genius, a man of science, history, and engineering. Sonic Frontiers lets us see this other side of him, largely through its unlockable “Egg Memos.” The Egg Memos are the best contributions any game has given to Eggman’s character: he marvels at the Ancient’s technology, figures out the Starfall Islands’ numerous technological and archeological mysteries, develops a fatherly affection for Sage, and he even gives his honest thoughts on Sonic, Amy, Knuckles and Tails. We get to hear him talk himself into accepting that Sage is alive, because of course he is smart enough to create life! He even talks about his cousin Maria, and the jealousy he felt over her being given love from his family that he was denied, despite her being gone. These memos manage to give Eggman more depth than three decades of games ever did.

What’s even better about all this is that it feels very much in character for him. He still often talks about future schemes for world conquest, laughs maniacally, has a very high opinion of himself, disregards the insane risks his own plans pose, and even briefly, excitedly contemplates stealing a defenseless Master Emerald before remembering he’s trapped. His affection for Sage and feelings towards Maria and his own family feel like extensions of the Eggman we briefly saw at the end of Sonic Adventure 2, when he reminisced over his Grandpa Gerald and how he inspired him to become a scientist. Eggman was never a man totally incapable of love; it’s just something the games have almost never explored before.

Unfortunately, as I said before, Sage’s own arc is thin. She shares just three-and-a-half minutes of screentime with Eggman, leaving their relationship feeling a pretty undercooked, though throwing the memos into the mix does help. But Sage’s relationship with Sonic fares a little better, as most of her actual development comes from observing and interacting with him. Sonic has brought many former adversaries into the fold, but Sage is one of the only ones whose change felt somewhat earned by the plot. Sage is consistently surprised by Sonic’s perseverance, moved by his friendships, and over the course of the game her interactions shift from cold indifference, to curiosity, to genuine respect. Unfortunately, the bulk of Sage’s interactions with Sonic still boil down to her telling him resistance is futile and refusing to explain anything to him, which can get a bit repetitive and boring.

Sonic Frontiers is, in many ways, the Sonic game story I’ve been waiting for for decades. It’s got the lore building of the Sonic Adventure games, the quality vocal performances expected of a modern game, and the writing of Flynn-era Archie and IDW comics. It’s still not entirely where I want it to be: Sage’s story is a bit weak, the tone of the story overshoots and is a little too serious and somber, and the lack of a larger cast leaves the world feeling empty. Future games will need to be willing to have longer cutscenes that give non-player characters like Eggman and Sage the screen time they need. They need to more effectively balance darker, more serious scenes with lighter moments and humor. Finally, future games need to have a larger cast, with more supporting and secondary characters in a livelier, more populated world.

You better be different. I hope you get a scar and everything.

Despite these issues, Sonic Frontiers truly feels like the start of a golden era of Sonic game storytelling. The potential this game opens up for future stories has me genuinely excited! Just stick with Ian Flynn, SEGA, and maybe bring other IDW writers like Stanley and Barnes into the mix too. Give Sonic Team the budget to realize a story with even greater scope. Let what’s been built here flourish and grow, and most importantly, follow through on what this game sets up and let these characters change!

Features, Opinion

Sonic Frontiers Is Big, But It Isn’t Very “Open”

7 Comments

I wandered Kronos Island for about three hours, defeating bosses, grinding on rails, and plucking collectables from the map. I periodically stopped at the Elder and the Hermit to convert my stash into gains, then popped over to an Amy or Sage point to get a few lines of characters self-reflecting. When I defeated the Titan of the region, I had to acknowledge a feeling that had been nagging me the whole time: “Is that all there is?”

Features, Opinion

What I Want From Sonic Frontiers DLC

11th November 202212th April 2024

28th October 202212th April 2024

8 Comments

Sonic as a franchise has always been…strangely averse to DLC. In an era where a lot of single-player games can get loads of post-launch content, SEGA has remained rather stingy when it comes to Sonic. Maybe we get some level packs reusing in-game assets, or cosmetics, or if we’re really lucky, some new characters or a couple brand new levels, but we’ve never really gotten anything substantial, even when you’d think a game was built for it. I mean, who wouldn’t have wanted more classic levels re-imagined in Sonic Generations or Sonic Mania?

#TV/Film, Features, News, Previews & Reviews, Video

Sonic Prime Gets Trailer, Dec 15 Release Date

18th September 202212th April 2024

10 Comments

Sonic fans are having a great year for content: we’re less than two weeks away from the release of Sonic Frontiers and less than two months away from Netflix’s Sonic Prime. The new animated series just dropped a one-minute trailer during Netflix’s animation Twitch stream.

The trailer highlights the action in the series along with the main plot. Sonic, having smashed the “Paradox Prism” is transported to a new dimension with his friends including Tails, Amy, Knuckles, and Rouge. The series also received an official release date: December 15. Check out the link below to see the full trailer.

#Games, Features, Previews & Reviews

TSS PREVIEW: Sonic Frontiers Impressions – Cautiously One Ok Rock-timistic

14th September 202212th April 2024

6 Comments

Sonic Frontiers represents the biggest shake-up of the Sonic the Hedgehog game franchise for over twenty years. So naturally, there has been a lot of apprehension from fans about the project since its announcement – especially as Sonic Team has built up a reputation of switching focus with each of its mainline titles since 2001.

Everybody is desperate to finally get a series of Sonic titles that establish (and maintain) a consistent visual, gameplay and narrative design. Will Sonic Frontiers be the start of a brand new branch/generation of Sonic games? Sonic Team has gone on record to say that is their intention. After playing a brief demo of the game at Gamescom last month, I’m cautiously optimistic enough to agree. With some reservations.

#Games, Features, Previews & Reviews

TSS Review: Spark The Electric Jester 3

9th September 202212th April 2024

2 Comments

With SAGE in full swing, it’s nice to be able to play an original work from a developer of several Sonic fan games who has gone on to succeed with their own creation. Felipe Daneluz is well known in the Sonic community for his fan game “Sonic Before The Sequel” among others. But his gaming career really took off with 2017’s “Spark the Electric Jester”.

#Community, #Games, Features, News, Previews & Reviews

TSS Fan Game Review: Sonic Triple Trouble 16-bit is a Triumph

30th August 202212th April 2024

If you’re reading this, chances are you know that Sonic has a long, storied history in fan games. So much so, that the Sonic community has managed to keep an online event devoted to them – the Sonic Amateur Game Expo, or “SAGE” – going for more than two decades. That event, which is currently ongoing as of this review’s publication, has played host to some absolute bangers over the decades.

#Games, Features, Interviews, News

Takashi Iizuka Wants to ‘Connect’ the Sonic Universes and Create a ‘Unified Sonic Experience’ – Sonic Stadium Interview

15th August 202212th April 2024

6 Comments

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.

Features, Opinion, Video

Impressions: Sonic x Higround Green Hill Keyboard

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.

#Comics, #Community, Features, News

IDW Sonic Panel Returns to San Diego Comic Con

11th July 202215th April 2024

23rd June 202215th April 2024

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It’s been a rough few years due to the pandemic, but things seem to slowly be going back to normal. Since 2020, the San Diego Comic-Con has been an online event only. Now, it’s finally back to a live event with many of its popular panels returning, including a Sonic presentation from IDW. The panel, “Sonic the Hedgehog: 50 Way Past Cool Issues and Counting!” will be hosted on Sunday, July 24th from 10:30-11:30 am PST. Here are all the panel details straight from the San Diego Comic-Con website.

IDW’s Sonic The Hedgehog comic book reaches its 50th issue this summer, a mind-blowing face-off with Sonic and Tails facing their twisted counterparts, Surge and Kit. IDW editor David Mariotte, artists Gigi Dutreix and Adam Bryce Thomas, and writer Daniel Barnes provide a behind-the-scenes look at the making of a milestone and tease what’s next for the Blue Blur!

I’ll be there to cover the panel along with any other Sonic news coming out of Comic-Con. If permitted, I may even be covering the panel live here on the Sonic Stadium!

Features, Previews & Reviews, Video

Today’s Sonic Origins Streaming Schedule

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Sonic Origins is out, and we’ve got a packed day of showing it off! If you’re not busy playing it yourself, if you’ve got any specific questions about the game, or if you just want to hang out and chat about it, join us on Twitch or YouTube as we take requests and experience a bit of Sonic Origins together!

Twitch feed: https://www.twitch.tv/sonicstadium

No-Cutscene-Spoilers Overview (PC / Steam Deck / Switch)

8 AM PT / 11 AM ET / 3 PM UTC
(about 60-90 minutes long)

We’ll be checking out all the core features of the game, answering your questions, and taking your requests as we JUST check out the games, settings, and bonuses in the collection! If you plan on getting the game later and don’t want to get spoiled on the new animated sequences, this stream is for you.

Extended Story Mode Gameplay

10 AM PT / 1 PM ET / 5 PM UTC
(until ???)

If you want to check out the game’s story mode including cutscenes, we’ll be playing as much of it as we reasonably can! No guarantee that we’ll complete all three games, but rest assured we’ll at least be rushing through a bunch.

Features, Previews & Reviews

TSS REVIEW: Sonic Origins

21st June 202216th April 2024

7th June 202216th April 2024

19 Comments

Sonic has been running for 31 years now, and yet of all of his adventures to date the original Mega Drive games still remain fan favourites. It’s no wonder that most of these timeless classics have been re-released in countless compilations over the years, but Sonic Origins stands out by daring to do something a little different this time around.

Features, Opinion

Sonic’s New Frontiers: What We Still Need From Sonic’s First Open World

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The IGN coverage thus far has left a lot of unanswered questions. Unsurprisingly, ten minutes of lightly edited gameplay footage without narration or context hasn’t proven itself to be a great way to premiere this game for the first time. We’ve seen a bit of the combat, we’ve seen a little world traversal, and we’ve seen more sky grinding than Final Rush and Rail Canyon’s unholy lovechild. But there’s some BIG aspects we still don’t know about. Big aspects like what the game is.

#Games, Features, News, Opinion

Sonic Frontiers Gameplay Impressions

3rd June 202216th April 2024

3rd May 202216th April 2024

10 Comments

So, Sonic Frontiers gameplay has finally been unveiled, thanks to two videos this week that outlined two key concepts; exploration of the open world, and advanced combat techniques. Now that we’d had a chance to digest and absorb all the information, our gut reaction is… we didn’t… hate it?

#Games, #SEGA, Features, Opinion

How the Xbox Series S/X Redeems Sonic Unleashed (Sort of)

29th April 202216th April 2024

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For as polished as Sonic Unleashed’s graphics are, its biggest visual flaw is its framerate. The Xbox 360 version played at a mostly steady 24-30 (capped) FPS, while the PS3 version was worse for wear despite an uncapped framerate that would bring the game up to 48FPS on occasion, but dropping to 24FPS or below ruining the flow of the game.

In many ways, the game’s graphic-intensive “Hedgehog Engine” was a bit too ahead of its time. It couldn’t keep a steady 30 FPS on the most powerful system of that era. It would take 2011’s Sonic Generations to iron the kinks out. While the Werehog levels weren’t affected too much by the framerate, several daytime Sonic levels dropped frames horribly. Jungle Joyride became a slideshow at times. Now, in 2022, Sonic Unleashed’s full potential has been unlocked thanks to the Boost Mode on the Xbox Series S/X, bringing the game to a steady 60 FPS.

To me, this brought the game from a guilty pleasure to a legitimately good Sonic title. Sonic’s daytime levels run as smooth as silk, giving you better handling and control. Even the Werehog levels feel less cumbersome as Sonic now feels faster and more responsive. There seems to be less blur as well. The high framerate allows for a faster response time. I can honestly say I was actually enjoying the Werehog levels for a change.

That doesn’t mean the game’s old flaws aren’t still present. Medal collecting near the end game is still soul-crushing, the Werehog levels are still a bit too long, and having the camera suddenly change position when you’re balancing across a steel beam is still as irritating as ever. That said, if you love this style of Sonic gameplay, it’s never looked or played better than it does on Series S/X.

The Series S/X boost mode also improves other Sonic titles as well. Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing Transformed gets a 60 FPS boost, and Sonic Generations runs at both 4K resolution and 60FPS.

To see Sonic Unleashed in action on the Series S/X, check out our gameplay video below.

Features, Guide

Guide to ALL Sonic Content in the KartRider Rush+ Crossover [UPDATED MAY 5]

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Since 2020, I’ve played (to my knowledge) every Sonic crossover collaboration in a mobile game. I beat up Mad Max rejects as Super Sonic in Fist of the North Star, I summoned Sonic as a demon in Shin Megami Tensei, and had an epic battle with my wallet in Cookie Run: Kingdom. However, of all the mobile games I dipped my foot into, only two ever took hold for more than a month: Ulala Idle Adventure, and KartRider Rush+. KartRider’s Sonic content has been broader and more involved than any of the other games I just mentioned, but if you want to get started with it, knowing where to find all the Sonic content is tricky (and potentially expensive) business.

[UPDATE] As of May 5, Tails and Chao are now available via the Monthly Pass, and the Dr. Eggman event has started. At this time, there are no future Sonic collaboration content updates we are aware of. However, if any do happen, we will update this article.

What is KartRider Rush+?

KartRider Rush+ is a mobile version of a very popular Korean kart racing game by Nexon (who you might know as the publisher of MapleStory). It features a cartoony style, a variety of game modes, a lengthy story mode with English-dubbed voice acting, and is free to play without timer restrictions. However, as it is a free to play game, many cosmetics, including many of the Sonic cosmetics, are only available if you pay for them. The game has gacha systems for certain cosmetics, but not for any of the Sonic content.

This is not an exhaustive tutorial of the game, but this guide will cover how to access the Sonic content, and how much it will cost.

What can I get for free?

Until May 10, you can redeem this code for Tails Headgear (a Tails face that hovers over your head, a Tails license plate, and a Chao license plate. To enter it, go to Settings (gear icon) > Account > Voucher Code. Passwords are region-specific.

EXPIRED: Until May 3, you can redeem this code for a free Sonic backback and “headgear” (a Sonic face that hovers over your head). To access code entry, go to Settings (gear icon) > Account > Voucher Code. Passwords are region-specific.

Until May 31, you can complete missions to collect “Sonic Letter Shards.” These shards can be exchanged for a Sonic aura, a Sonic Skateboard, a Ring Headgear, a Sonic Driftmoji (special effects that appear when you drift), Sonic Balloons (which are consumable when you equip them in item races, so be aware), and Ring decorations for your character’s home. The missions are daily, so you will need to play multiple days and complete them multiple times to collect every item.

The missions can be accessed from Events > Sonic Collection. The rewards can be accessed from Banquet > Sonic Collection.

Until June 16, you can unlock Sonic himself as a Kart (and a Sonic face mask) by completing special missions that will reward you with “Nitro Shards.” The mission screen then lets you convert a small number of Nitro Shards into a larger number of Ring Shards (yeah, I know, it’s bizarrely indirect). And as you collect more Ring Shards, more rewards unlock. Some missions repeat daily, and some repeat weekly.

At this point, I want to bring up that many collectables in this game are time-limited. I was annoyed by this at the beginning, but the game will throw a lot of time limited karts and clothes at you, so don’t take the limitation too seriously. By the time one free kart expires, you’ll have a different cool free kart to play with. Items list the number of days they’re available, or “Perm” if they permanently stay in your inventory.

Three tiers of unlocking Sonic are 30 days, 90 days, and permanent. If all you want is to dip into the game for free, try it out, play as Sonic, and then drop it, then 30 days might be good enough. Only you yourself know if it’s worth coming back every day to creep towards unlocking Sonic permanently.

This Sonic event can be accessed from the Sonic the Hedgehog icon on the main menu.

Until May 31, you can earn Dr. Eggman (Racer) as part of the “[Dr. Eggman] Secret Base” event. By completing missions, you’ll be able to flip over up to two of the cards on the grid and get rewards, including a Knuckles License Plate, Shadow/Tails/Sonic/Chao decals, Sonic balloons, and a 30-day unlock of Dr. Eggman himself. If you flip over all 20 cards, you’ll permanently unlock Dr. Eggman.

You can access the event via Banquet > [Dr. Eggman] Secret Base from the main menu.

Until May 31, you can earn Chao (Pet) as part of the free monthly Activity Pass. By completing weekly quests, you’ll earn Pass Points that increase your Pass Level (100 points per level), and unlock new rewards at each tier (up to Lv. 80). You can earn a 7 day unlock for Chao at Lvs. 2, 40, and 60. At Lv. 80, Chao unlocks permanently. At Lvs. 5, 25, 45, 65, and 77, you’ll earn Tails Balloons.

You can also earn a time-limited version of Tails (kart) at Lvs. 10, 30, 50, and 70, each adding 7 days and letting you play as Tails for free up to 28 days. You will need to purchase the Honor Pass in order to unlock him permanently (more below).

To access the Pass and Quests, go to the Pass icon on the main menu.

What do I have to pay for?

As of May 1, unlocking all available Sonic content costs a flat sum of $39, and requires actively completing missions and quests throughout the month.

If you want to unlock Tails (kart) permanently, he is available via the monthly Glory pass for $2.99. Once you pay, you immediately get a 7-day Tails unlock. As mentioned above, you need to complete weekly quests to gain Pass Points, gaining one level for every 100 points. Once you get your pass to Lv. 80, Tails will unlock permanently.

To access the Pass and Quests, go to the Pass icon on the main menu.

Things get a bit more involved from here on out:

Until May 31, you can unlock Knuckles and several other cosmetics via Red Star Ring Packs, which have a set price. The packs can be accessed from Banquet > Red Star Ring Pack.

Pack A is $8.99 and contains a different Sonic aura, Shadow balloons, some items, and a single Red Star Ring.

Pack B is $8.99 and contains a Dr. Eggman mask, a Shadow license plate and decals, some items, and another Red Star Ring.

Pack C is $17.99 and contains Knuckles (who is a driver, not a kart), Knuckles balloons and decals, and one last Red Star Ring.

To unlock Shadow (Kart), you’ll need the Red Star Rings from all three packs above. This puts Shadow’s price at about $36, though you’ll also get Knuckles and all the other Red Star Ring accessories and items.

Until May 31, you can unlock Dr. Eggman’s Egg Booster (Kart) by collecting ALL the other characters (which adds it to that $36 price tag to get Shadow and Knuckles, the temporary versions of Sonic, Tails, Chao, and Dr. Eggman are enough to unlock their part of the list). You can also earn 1up balloons, a Sonic avatar frame, a Knuckles glove on a wand, and a Sonic Team title on the path to completion.

The Egg Booster event can be accessed from the Final Battle vs. Dr. Eggman icon on the main menu.

Summary

I’ve personally spent more time in this game than I spend with many other full priced games I’ve purchased, and in that sense, I’ve felt justified in buying the Sonic cosmetics. However, I know not everyone is willing or able to simply spend $36+ on a mobile game. Hopefully this guide has helped anyone interested in the collaboration understand the costs involved, what you can get for free, and if the economics of this game are worth it to you at all.

For those who are interested in looking at the content but not buying or playing it, Sonic Stadium will have coverage of all these collaboration items on our YouTube channel as the event progresses. We’ve already started with Knuckles, Shadow, and the driver cosmetics:

Features

7 Movie References In Sonic the Hedgehog 2 You Might Have Missed

28th April 202216th April 2024

Adam Tuff

4 Comments

The second Sonic the Hedgehog Movie is absolutely jam-packed with references to the games and even a nod to one of Ben Schwartz’s previous shows, Parks and Recreation. In addition to these, there are a plethora of movie references and tropes featuring throughout the 2-hour run time. While some of these are very obvious (such as Officer Wade Whipple’s referral to Ghostbusters’ infamous candy Kaiju, The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man), some will only have been spotted by the most avid movie buffs!
Below are our 7 favourite subtle movie references in Sonic’s latest cinema outing…

Be warned – movie spoilers ahead!!!

Klaatu Barada Nikto!

Before Knuckles makes his appearance through the ring, Dr Robotnik welcomes the three nameless warriors with the very strange greetings of “Klaatu Barada Nikto!”. Classic sci-fi fans will know this as the famous phrase that originated in the 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still – uttered to pacify the giant robot Gort and prevent him from destroying the world. Ironic considering the final act of the movie!

That Slide

Sonic sets about trashing the Wachowski household minutes after Tom and Maddie depart for Hawaii, starting with a slide into the living room with his back to the camera. Those with a keen knowledge of 80’s coming-of-age flicks will recognise this as a homage to the underwear dance scene from 1983’s Risky Business performed by a young Tom Cruise, in which Cruise’s character Joel has also just been left home alone in his parents’ house.

Witching Hour

Margaret Hamilton, the mother of Hamilton Meserve, plays the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz.

When Robotnik returns to Earth at night and confronts Sonic in the Wachowski house he threatens Sonic, finishing his line with “…AND YOUR LITTLE DOG TOO!”. The quote references the threat given by the Wicked Witch of the West to Dorothy in the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz. The threat is often used as a trope when a villain wants to prove how evil they are.

The name of the Wachowski family dog? Ozzy, of course.

Cast Away

Robotnik’s descent into complete madness when he is exiled to the Mushroom Planet is staved off when he creates a replica Agent Stone out of, well, a stone. This bears semblance to 2000’s Cast Away, in which Tom Hank’s character Chuck creates an inanimate companion, Wilson, from a flotsam Volleyball after being marooned on a remote uninhabited island.

“It’s derivative!”

Knuckles and Robotnik’s navigation through the Labyrinth Zone sees the two antagonists chased down corridor by a huge boulder. While this has most certainly become an adventure movie and video game trope, the idea originated in Raiders of the Lost Ark, the first Indiana Jones movie. The trope doesn’t go unnoticed by Robotnik, as he says “I refuse to die like this; it’s derivative!”

The 8^th Wonder

During the fight between our heroes and the Death Egg Robot and shortly before the destruction of the biplane, Robotnik begins to mockingly swipe at Tails as he manoeuvres around the mechanical juggernaut. This is of course a tribute to the 1933 classic King Kong, in which the final scene sees the colossus batting away attacking Curtis Helldiver biplanes.

Home Run

The second Sonic movie ends where the first started in the Green Hills baseball field, with our protagonist getting his wish of having others to play with. After Knuckles’ “Power bump” that sees him hit a home run, a familiar horn riff plays as declares his conquering of the bases. Soundtrack enthusiasts will recognise this as the theme to 1983’s The Natural, Barry Levinson’s love letter to one of America’s favourite sports.

Have we missed any subtle movie references in Sonic 2? Let us know in the comments!

Features, Video

Roblox, Mobile Events, and LOTS of Music: This Week in Video

23rd April 202216th April 2024

Hoy all, it’s been a VERY busy week for video content on Sonic Stadium, and while we used to simply round up everything we’ve been doing on Twitch, we’ve been pushing forward on getting more YouTube content together, and we’d like to highlight that too! Here’s our inaugural This Week in Video!

On Twitch

These and all our Twitch streams can be found over on the Sonic Stadium Twitch Channel!

Sonic Talk Podcast – Sunday, Apr. 24 – 4PM PST / 7 PM EST / 12 AM GMT

It’s nearing the end of the month, and thus it’s time for Nuckles87, Shigs, and GX to round up everything in Sonic news this month in a brand new Sonic Talk podcast! Expect plenty of Sonic Origins discussion this week.

Almost Every Sonic – Tuesday, Apr. 26 – 4 PM PST / 7 PM EST / 12 AM GMT

On Tuesday, Almost Every Sonic returns, and will be checking out the Sonic events in KartRider Rush+ on mobile. We may also return to Sonic Speed Simulator to check in on its latest updates, time permitting.

SegaSonic Radio – Friday, Apr. 29 – 4 PM PST / 7 PM EST / 12 AM GMT

As always, GX is digging deep to find plenty of great SEGA and Sonic music for SegaSonic Radio. It’s the weekend, so chill and enjoy some Sonic hits!

On YouTube

Our biggest project is that we’ve finally uploaded our ENTIRE 30 episode backlog of SegaSonic Radio!! You can check out the entire 2021/2022 series thus far via this playlist, or just start from our latest episode here:

We’ve got plenty of gameplay uploads this week! To start, Nuckles87 played Sonic Venture, a very impressive fan game demo made entirely in the PS4/PS5 game creator Dreams!

In Roblox, GX took a look at both the Nickverse Sonic 2 event and plenty of Sonic Speed Simulator.

Nuckles87 also spent some time in Sonic Dash and Sonic Forces: Speed Battle for the Sonic 2 movie events, and brought us gameplay footage of Movie Tails and Movie Knuckles:

If you’re yearning for more, Nuckles posted video of the lead-up, collecting Knuckles emblems in Sonic Dash, and completing Tails missions / Knuckles Challenges in Sonic Forces. Go check ’em out!

One More Thing

Starting next week, we’ll be uploading the archive of another of our streaming series, Winter Wonderworld, where GX begrudgingly plods his way through the entirety of Balan Wonderworld. Each in the nine-episode series will go live Thursdays at 12:00 PM EST.

We’re also preparing to upload our entire backlog of Almost Every Sonic. If you like Sonic longplays, obscure games, and weird mobile crossovers, stay tuned over the coming weeks!

#TV/Film, Features, Opinion

Bats, Family, and Outer Space: What Knuckles Should Do in His Paramount+ Series

21st April 202216th April 2024

15th April 202216th April 2024

*** SPOILER WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS PLOT DETAILS FROM THE END OF SONIC 2 ***

I am a Knuckles fan. His name is my online handle, which I’ve been using consistently since the early days of the SEGA forums. I love his moves, his lore, and even his weird comic series. So, naturally, I was excited when Paramount announced a Knuckles-centric TV series a few months ago, starring the red, dreadlocked knucklehead. It wasn’t long before my worry over Sonic 2 fumbling things tempered that excitement with anxiety, but now that I’ve seen the movie that anxiety has given way to enthusiasm. Knuckles was the best thing in that movie and I am ready for a show about him.

But…what exactly will the Knuckles series be? All we know about it is that it’ll be a live action series on Paramount Plus. I can’t imagine something like that being done without a sizable budget akin to Disney+’s MCU and Star Wars offerings. That is an assumption I will be running with for this article. What do I want from the Knuckles series? A lot, but I’d like to think my hopes are at least somewhat realistic (yes, including this first one.)

It’s Time to Go Off-World

The Sonic movies have been consistently teasing us with a larger universe. We’ve been given brief glimpses of Sonic’s home and the mushroom planet, Tails has talked about a “village,” and Knuckles’ introduction was even preceded by strange masked aliens, initially introduced in the Sonic 2 Pre-Quill comic.

It’s high time the Sonic Movie Universe make good on those teases and actually take us somewhere. A planet hopping space adventure would be the perfect backdrop for a TV show. Likewise, a TV show is a great place to flesh out multiple locations beyond Earth in the Sonic Movie Universe. I wouldn’t expect most of these locations to be especially fantastical or grand for purely budgetary reasons, but I will definitely take “generic desert planet” and “rusty cheap-looking backwater planet” over “Knuckles goes to New Jersey.”

Make it Knuckles, Sonic and Tails’ First Adventure Together

Yes, this is a Knuckles show, but that doesn’t mean Sonic and Tails can’t get in on the action! Sonic 2 served as an origin for the trio coming together as friends, but there is no better medium for their first proper adventure than a TV show. Explore their chemistry. Let them talk and explore their interactions outside of the context of a movie climax. Let Sonic be the fish out of water as he’s taken to places Knuckles is more familiar with.

As fun as Knuckles is, I think he was at his best when he had Sonic and Tails to bounce off of, so it’d be a shame to separate them for his small screen debut. Let Knuckles have the main plot and the spotlight, but allow Sonic and Tails to tag along for the ride.

Bring Back Knuckles’ People…and Make Them the Bad Guys

Look: I don’t care what Knuckles said, Longclaw didn’t wipe out his entire tribe. They are alive, and if they are meant to be dead, undead them, because they would make the perfect villains for this series. It is already firmly established in these movies that the echidnas are the power-hungry aggressors. They were the ones who created the Master Emerald, they were the ones who used it for war, and they were the ones who hunted down the owls and attempted to take Sonic’s power. They can certainly be three dimensional villains. Giving them a reason to be so power hungry would only make them more interesting. But ultimately, Knuckles needs to come down against them.

So how could this work? Have them abandon Knuckles. When they went after Longclaw and failed to capture Sonic, they began searching the universe relentlessly for him and the map to the Master Emerald rather than return to him. This would not only demonstrate how far his people have fallen that they would rather hunt for power than go back for one of their own, it would also allow the SMU to explore a different kind of familial loss, and the differences between family by blood and family by love, and why one is more meaningful.

Heck, Tikal could even be introduced as an unwilling pawn of her people. When the Master Emerald is used at the end of Sonic 2, the echidnas learn that Knuckles has it. Tikal is sent under the lie that she’s looking for their people. Knuckles, upon discovering they are alive, agrees to help her find them. Sonic and Tails won’t let him go alone. This gives us the motivation for the planet-hopping adventure as they go from planet to planet, searching for clues, Tikal subtly pointing them in the right direction. This was, in reality, done to separate the Master Emerald from its protectors.

Some version of this, where the story potential for Knuckles’ people is utilized, and Knuckles is made to see the truth about them, feels like the perfect place to take this. It wraps up standing plot points, gives Knuckles a unique group of villains who are personal to him, strengthens his newfound bonds, and gives our tri-colored trio their first test as the Master Emerald’s guardians.

If You’re Going to Focus on Humans, Focus on the Wachowskis

I am going to say something potentially controversial: Tom and Maddie Wachowski are the only decent human characters in the Sonic movies. Everyone else is an annoying cartoon caricature of a human, Jim Carrey worst of all. But even if I liked Carrey, he shouldn’t be here, as Knuckles ought to have his own villain. So since a live action Sonic tv series will inevitably need to spend time with humans on Earth for budgetary reasons, they might as well flesh out the best ones.

Their plot? Well, jumping off my previous point: have them be the ones protecting the Master Emerald while the furballs are out in space. Maybe a few different parties, one of whom were hired by the echidnas, are after the gemstone and they need to go on their own adventure to keep it away from them. They can be hunted by those weird masked bird people from Sonic 2, some random humanoid aliens in make-up, and maybe eventually a certain…bat jewel thief.

Alternatively, if Knuckles and co need a human companion, Maddie can go with them and get some much-needed screen time, and Tom can get paired with Rachel and they’re made to hash their whole thing out.

Bring in Rouge

So if you ignored this article’s spoiler warnings, chances are you already know that Sonic 3 will have Shadow, effectively setting it up to be an adaptation of Sonic Adventure 2. You know who you can’t leave out of any version of SA2? Rouge. Problem is, with Sonic 3 set up to be a story about Shadow, Rouge will almost certainly take a backseat, much like Tails did in Sonic 2. That’s why Rouge absolutely needs to be in the Knuckles series.

There are multiple reasons to introduce Rouge here: she is the closest thing Knuckles has to his own adversary and rival in the games. They are both treasure hunters, and both have an interest in the Master Emerald. So bringing her in as a villain for Knuckles to eventually deal with only makes sense. With the Master Emerald and GUN now present in the SMU, Rouge also has something to do in regards to her own plotline. She has a jewel to hunt and a faction that can employ her skills for covert ops on Earth.

Bare minimum, the Knuckles series ought to lay the groundwork for Rouge’s role in Sonic 3.

Heck, Bring In Some Other Sonic Characters Too

The great thing about TV shows is that you can give a character or group of characters a complete story in a single episode’s run time. The Knuckles series isn’t just a good place to set up some stuff for Sonic 3, it’s a great place to set up stuff for the franchise as a whole going forward.

You know what would be cool? An episode where Knuckles just had to work with the Chaotix. While Sonic, Tails, and whoever else is with them go off to explore a planet or check out its local cuisine (mostly off-screen), Knuckles hires the bumbling detectives to find the next clue for finding his people or whatever he’s doing. Hijinks, of course, ensue.

A few episodes just establishing characters while Knuckles is on his adventure is a stellar way to bring new Sonic characters into the franchise.

Let the IDW Creative Team Work on an Episode or Two

You know who’s been consistently producing the best Sonic stories for the past four years? IDW. Yes, they’re busy people. Ian Flynn is working on a friggin game. I don’t care. Flynn has experience working in TV, Evan Stanley’s been doing great work at IDW for years, bring one or both of them in for an episode or two. I’m sure you all can work it out.

Nothing would make the fandom more excited for the series than their involvement, and they’re input would be nothing but a net benefit for the show. Please make this happen!

Dive Into the History of the Chaos Emeralds

Sonic 2 remained fairly vague on the details regarding the history of the Master Emerald and the Chaos Emeralds. Since Knuckles is the character most directly connected to the gemstones, a series about him ought to dive deeper into their history. How did the echidnas get their hands on the chaos emeralds? How did they create the Master Emerald? What other sorts of conflicts were the emeralds involved in? Heck, where did the Chaos Emeralds come from? SEGA has always been cagey about the Chaos Emerald’s origins, but that’s no reason for the movies to not touch on that in some way.

Whether its Tikal, Knuckles’ people, or a plot exposition fairy, the Knuckles series is the perfect opportunity to dive deeper. And if this does happen, Chaos and the chao ought to also be brought in, at least in some capacity. Chaos was the original Master Emerald guardian after all, and we know he wasn’t inside the Master Emerald in this universe. Maybe when the echidnas took the emeralds, he was imprisoned somewhere or something?

Basically, Make This a Weird Sonic Adventure Adaptation Set in Outer Space

I mean, this is basically what this whole article has been leading to, hasn’t it? Sonic Adventure was, in many ways, basically Knuckles’ story. His people, home, and the Master Emerald all sit at the center of the game’s events. It is the perfect game to mine for Knuckles-centric plot elements, and the many changes the SMU has made to the echidnas makes the game’s plot elements all the more enticing for a Knuckles TV series.

As I’ve been writing this, I’ve expected that Paramount already knows what it wants from a Knuckles series. So far, their Sonic writers have had a decent idea of what to take from the games. They’ve already grabbed bits and pieces from Sonic Adventure. I just hope they go back to that well again for this.

#TV/Film, Features, News, Opinion

Sonic Movies, Baseball, and Found Family Dynamics

12th April 202216th April 2024

7 Comments

*** SPOILER WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS PLOT DETAILS AND SCREENSHOTS FROM THE END OF SONIC 2 ***

When I went into the first Sonic movie more than two years ago, I wasn’t expecting much. I was incredibly cynical about the whole affair, in fact. “Sure,” I thought, “they made the design better. But plenty of terrible movies can still look nice.” Then, the Paramount and SEGA logos rolled, and the movie spent the next 13 minutes winning me over, before one moment finally sealed it. It demonstrated this movie was going to be more than pop culture references and Jim Carrey being Jim Carrey. This was a movie about a lonely kid that, shockingly, had a heart. Here, SEGA’s cool blue mascot was in a bad place, and desperately needed to find a way to move forward.

By the end of it he did, and it all started at a baseball field.

After giving the audience a tour of his adopted home, Green Hills, Sonic goes to a baseball game. A team wins, and they celebrate together, something Sonic is clearly envious of. Later, after nightfall, Sonic takes to the field and uses his speed to pretend to be an entire team. As a scene, there is a lot to like here: it features a creative use of Sonic’s speed, it shows what he’s capable of, and it also gives more screen time to establishing his character. The personalities Sonic gives his “teammates” are cute, and Ben Schwartz does a superb job bringing the whole thing to life. But then Sonic hits the ball, fails to catch it, “wins” the game by a hair, readies himself for the same sort of adulation he saw earlier only to experience…nothing. Because he’s alone.

For a moment, his cheerful façade cracks, and Sonic does something he never does in the games: he loses his cool. Overwhelmed by his loneliness, he unleashes all his pent-up frustrations by running laps around the field. This leads to a power outage across the entire Pacific Northwest, which naturally gets the attention of the US government and leads to Sonic getting discovered. More importantly, it also starts Sonic on a two-movie-long journey to finally experience what he saw on that field.

Two years later, Sonic was playing baseball again, but this time he wasn’t alone. He had an entire family to play with, celebrate with, and go off for ice cream with. As a scene, it acts as a very effective bookend to Sonic’s journey to end his loneliness and find his place in the world. Years after losing one family, he’s found another.

The through line these scenes book end ultimately make up the emotional core of these otherwise fairly trivial popcorn flicks, which makes them probably the most important ones of the entire film series so far. As cool as any of the action sequences are, and as effective as the characterization is for Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails, it would all mean next-to-nothing without that emotional core. Enjoyable movies aren’t built on action, pop culture jokes, weird Jim Carrey antics and Olive Garden gift cards. They are built on character, more specifically making audiences care about those characters.

Caring about Sonic and wanting to see him find that family he so desperately needs gives those action scenes weight. They make the bad jokes and Jim Carrey antics bearable. They make Sonic feel like a character and not a walking collection of dated references, and they give him a means to connect to characters like Tom, Tails, and Knuckles, creating the most effective and impactful scenes across both movies.

Of course, plenty of movies do the “found family” thing better, with Pixar’s Luca and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy executing it more effectively. The concept is also nothing new for Sonic as a franchise. Tails is Sonic’s little brother in the games, and the Freedom Fighters are basically Sonic’s surrogate family in both SatAM and Archie. Regardless, if someone had told me a few years ago that I’d get a little emotional at a scene in a Sonic movie where Sonic called a human “dad,” I’d call you a damn liar.

These movies had everything going against them from the beginning. From out of touch executives, to the terrible track record of video game adaptations, to how regularly terrible movies with cartoon animal sidekicks usually are! And yet, somehow, Sonic was able to find box office, audience, and (modest) critical success. Twice. Some will put the credit on the redesign and “listening to fans,” but the actual reason is much more fundamental: the movie’s writers were smart enough to give the characters heart, rooted in a game of baseball, that sprang forth into the most successful video game film franchise of all time.

As we move forward into a wider cinematic universe, I can only hope the Sonic Movie Universe’s creatives don’t lose sight of this. That heart is something that must be built upon and expanded, in order to keep audiences invested in these characters and their adventures.

#TV/Film, Features, Podcasts

Sonic Talk Podcast: Sonic 2 Movie Spoilercast Special

11th April 202216th April 2024

Everyone on Sonic Talk has finally seen Sonic 2, and we’ve brought our thoughts to the podcast alongside our guest and boss Dreadknux!

With five different views, good discussion is guaranteed! But of course, with loads of people comes a lengthy discussion, as we dissect and debate the entirety of the movie and its characters in depth. So be sure to grab a snack and drink before hand, or save us for when you’ve got some chores or work to do! Either way, check us out below:

Features, Podcasts

Sonic Talk Podcast 85: My Favorite Sonic Character is the Olive Garden

28th March 202216th April 2024

Sonic Talk episodes are finally returning to our Youtube, and we’re starting with the latest episode, recorded March 31. In this, we talk about the Sonic 2 Pre-quill comic, the last bit of Sonic movie news before the release of the movie, and Tails’ debut as a Vtuber, among other things!

But first, we talk about the latest things we’ve been playing, including Kirby and the Forgotten Land and Mario Kart 8’s DLC. Check out the episode below:

#TV/Film, Features, Previews & Reviews

TSS Movie Review: Sonic the Hedgehog 2

12th February 202216th February 2022

10 Comments

You’d be forgiven for wondering if the success of the first Sonic the Hedgehog movie was a total fluke. After all, were it not for intense community feedback (and eventually the artistic talents of Tyson Hesse), the blue blur’s big-screen debut would have surely flopped. But with a car crash swiftly avoided, and the fanbase on-side as a result, it would have been easy for Paramount to rest on its laurels and phone it in for the sequel. Especially with the introduction of rival Knuckles the Echidna to automatically guarantee fan support.

#Merchandise, #TV/Film, Features, News

RUMOR: Sonic 2 Happy Meal Toys Coming Soon?

2nd February 20222nd February 2022

4 Comments

It’s been almost two decades since Sonic and friends have been part of a McDonald’s Happy Meal promotion, but it looks like Sonic will be returning to the Golden Arches very soon. Yesterday, several images hit Twitter showing three (out of six) Sonic 2 Happy Meal toys. Tails, Knuckles, and a yet unknown Eggman robot. The images were quickly taken down due to a copyright claim.

Now, McDonald’s just started a Stitch Happy Meal promotion, so if this is true, don’t expect to see the toys for a few weeks, and it may depend on what country you are in. While we’re putting this under rumor, the images being taken down quickly due to a copyright strike would suggest that they could be the real deal.

#SEGA, #TV/Film, Features, News

Sonic 2 Chinese New Year Posters Show Brand New Renders