Hope the first few days of 2008 are going well for you guys. I’ve been busy the last few days recreating skins for the SSMB. Last Friday I sneakily replaced the narrow Two Foxy skin with a new widescreen/liquid version, which even though it’s the same colour scheme, I really think is an improvement. Yesterday those who were advocates of the Knucklehead skin noticed that their favourite red skin had also been updated, stretchy-pants design and all. Today, I’ve finished a character skin of someone I started 12 months ago but never finished. At last, you can view the SSMB in the ‘Creamed’ skin design in all its light coloured glory. (Note: I know the buttons are still from the Knuckles skin — hopefully we’ll get that fixed soon). Let me know what your opinions are of these new skins; hopefully they’re making up for the loss of the Halloween and Christmas skins. I’m not stopping either; expect updated and new skins soon.

For some of you, the year’s going to get a little bit better – the SSMB and TSS staff have judged amongst the entries of the three competitions held over the last month and have come up with winners! Read on to find out who clinched the prizes![break]

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Christmas Card Contest:
For this contest, we asked you to grab your pens, pencils or computer writing tablets and design a new Christmas Card for the TSS crew. It was Violet94’s festive picture of Sonic in a Santa suit that won her first prize. Click here to see Violet94’s entry. Violet94 wins a promotional copy of Sonic Rivals 2 on PSP, plus an exclusive Sonic Rivals 2 T-Shirt.

The cute and funny style of Gabz Girl’s nativity picture earned her the second place prize. Eggman as the saviour of the world? WTF indeed! Click here to see Gabz Girl’s entry. Gabz Girl wins Issues #177 and #181 of Sonic Archie comics, Issue #25 of the Sonic X comic and a blue ‘Sonic Team’ themed Mario & Sonic T-Shirt.

Finally, the third prize goes to Christmas Band, for his uniquely colourful entry – it made us all think of candy canes and random chocolates you get at Christmas. Because I love chocolate coins, CB gets third place. Click here to see Christmas Band’s entry. Christmas Band wins a Sonic and the Secret Rings soundtrack sampler, plus a kid’s size Sonic X T-Shirt.

Honourable Mentions:
Alex Sly Cooper: there’s nothing better than getting Chaos Emeralds on Christmas Day. Just don’t let Eggman get them;
Sonaos: the fact that Black Doom was jingling away on the piano almost won her a prize;
Diogo: An awesome recreation of the nativity play using Sonic characters. Reminds us of Sonic and the Secret Rings, actually.
Supersaiyanneo: Cute picture of Sonic and the gang singing Christmas Carols. And, it’s a Christmas Carol as well (everyone knows of my well-documented hatred of ‘Carollers’ that don’t actually bother. Welcome to Essex).

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Photograph Contest:
Imagination was the name of the game here, as we asked everyone to take a photo relating to Sonic and Christmas. Supersaiyanneo was the clear first place winner here with his awesome use of Sonic plushies and set pieces to take a snap of a scene. We especially like Tails’ uncharacteristic apathy at Eggman nicking off with the toys. Click here to see Supersaiyanneo’s entry. Supersaiyanneo wins a Phantasy Star Universe soundtrack sampler, a choice of either a Sonic or Tails action figure, plus a yellow 15th Anniversary Sonic 1 sprite T-Shirt.

Stratoss-Phere earned second prize because the crappiness of his photo added a layer of intrigue to his entry. We can see Knuckles in a Christmas hat, but just what’s going on everywhere else? It’s like something you’d have in a nightmare on Christmas Eve. Click here to see Stratoss-Phere’s entry. Stratoss-Phere wins Sonic Rush Adventure for Nintendo DS, a blue ‘Sonic Team’ themed Mario & Sonic T-Shirt and either a Sonic or Tails action figure (whichever is left from Supersaiyanneo’s first pick).

Although we tend to think grabbing a load of plushies and lining them up is pretty lazy, we have to hand it to Sonaos for at least putting it into a decent Christmassy context. Decorating a tree with merchandise in place of baubles and tinsel earns you third place. Click here to see Sonaos’ entry. Sonaos wins SEGA Mega Drive Collection for PS2 and a red ‘Team Mario’ themed Mario & Sonic T-Shirt.

Honourable Mentions:
Narstyle: Just missed out, but we just love those massive Sonic and Tails things. I think Adam had a heart attack.

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Writing Contest:
NB: In checking out these entries, ignore any instances of the ‘Ó’ character – they weren’t typos in the entries but rather artifacts that appeared when converting the entries into txt format, which I couldn’t be arsed to fix.

There were four prizes to give away for this contest; potentially the easiest but in reality much harder to win because… well, we get sent a lot of crap. The mission was to simply write what Sonic and Christmas (together) means to you. Stratoss-Phere just clinched the top prize, with a very bizarre story featuring the TSS Staff. It was very difficult to read, very difficult to understand and involves a pointless and gratuitous use of the word ‘fuck’. Had this been any other entry we’d have pushed it off the face of the earth, but it just made us chuckle incessantly. Click here to read Stratoss-Phere’s entry. Stratoss-Phere wins an ultra-rare Mario & Sonic Olympic Shirt, a Mario & Sonic carrier bag to put it in and a Sonic 06 mug.

Elf Tamer came a very close second, with a story that includes a self-reflecting message within it. It’s a good vehicle to detail your fan-ness of Sonic and we loved reading it. Click here to read Elf Tamer’s entry. Elf Tamer wins a red ‘Team Mario’ and blue ‘Sonic Team’ themed Mario & Sonic T-Shirts plus a copy of Sonic Rush Adventure on Nintendo DS.

Third prize goes to Jelly, who spoke from the heart and told all about what being a Sonic fan means. It’s a more literal account of the ‘Sonic, Christmas and me’ statement we set for our members, and it’s well written. Click here to read Jelly’s entry. Jelly wins SEGA Classics Collection on PS2 and a blue ‘Sonic Team’ themed Mario & Sonic T-Shirt.

Finally, but perhaps not least, is the fourth prize winner, and that goes to Sonic_Fan due to its sheer absurdity. We certainly weren’t expecting a complete hatred of Mario fans, instigating a death of the Mario fanbase while TSS apparently dances from their sadness. I’d like to say we wouldn’t endorse that kind of actions really, but we would endorse this entry because it’s quite silly and made us laugh a lot. Click here to read Sonic_Fan’s entry. Sonic_Fan wins a Sonic and the Secret Rings T-Shirt and a Mario & Sonic branded pin and keychain.

Honourable Mentions:
Kadosho: Sonic is a Christmas gift in itself he says. We tend to agree.
Nintendogs: We liked that Sonic spindashed Santa right in the face.
Supersaiyanneo: Told us a cool account of what made him a Sonic fan, and what Christmas means to him with Sonic merchandise.

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Those who have won prizes, please PM me with your mailing address so we can get these to you as soon as possible! Supersaiyanneo also needs to tell me which out of a Sonic or Tails action figure he would prefer. Many thanks to Kevin from SEGA Europe, Adam (T-Bird) and Turbo for providing all of these prizes, and thanks to all that took part in the contests and the rest of the advent calendar.

It’s New Years Eve people. Well, it is for us British folk right now. Antipodean chums like Hawkz and Elson might have had it already because they like to gatecrash a party early (I’ve heard about Andrew’s stories…), but by and large… New Years Eve, OK? And that means 2008 is right around the corner. Also means for me, that I reflect on the last 12 months and reckon where it is I’ve gone wrong. I’d be lying if I said that 2007 has been good – it’s been bloody fantastic, all things considered.

The Sonic Stadium has played host to many great meetups involving growing numbers of Sonic fans. In May Elson ‘Darkspeeds’ Wong took a trip around the world and landed in London, planning to meet up with myself and Adam along the way. Somehow more people invited themselves along and it became what was known as ‘Wrecksfest’. It couldn’t have been a better turn of events though, as a group of 12 or so guys and gals waltzed the city, went to the pub for several hours and had dinner at Pizza Hut. We also arranged another meetup later that year which was dubbed ‘BirdCon’ for Adam’s apparent move to Japan (which never happened due to certain issues with the company involved). TSS was also there for Video Games Live 2007 in November and a special trip to SEGA Europe to play Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games weeks before the UK release. It’s ironic that not one meetup has been named after us yet, really.

Speaking of which, Sonic Cage Dome’s Zizou is heading to London in a few days time, an event to which I am invited to, so I’ll be out to see the Cage Dome guys round about then. If you fancy tagging along, see this website for more details. We’ll have more meetups in 2008 though, and when I can be bothered to fix one up you guys will be the first to know. It’ll probably be sometime in the holidays so as many people as possible can make the trip.

We’ve also been to Japan! Aw yeah. TSS was able to sneak into the Tokyo Game Show and take sordid pictures of a guy in the best Sonic costume ever created. We also played the new NiGHTS before the whole world and got a taste of manic Japanese gaming action. It was an experience to be sure, and we’re currently pulling the video we made so we can show you some of the stuff we took at the event too.

Games-wise, it’s been a mixed bag. The good news is that we haven’t had any real horrors the likes of which we’ve only seen in Sonic 06 (I tried to play that again the other day, almost threw my controller around in a rage), but on the flipside we’ve not had a proper canon Sonic game this year. To be honest, I don’t care as long as when it does come around, it’s as polished as possible. I want 2007 to be the year SEGA realises that they have to go back to basics on some level with the franchise – evident when America bossman Simon Jeffery spoke exclusively to TSS in October.

It wasn’t all mildly amusing spinoffs though, especially not on the handheld front. Sonic Rush Adventure has been a standout game, slapping everything else Sonic flat in the face and being the first TSS 10/10 in aeons. It could be argued that the game only got top marks by comparing it to recent Sonic games. Not so; there are elements in Rush Adventure that could rival the Mega Drive classics and that is a pretty big feat for SEGA – especially the SEGA of this day and age – to pull off.

We’ve had our fair share of competitions too. Sonic Rush Adventure in particular had a cool Treasure Hunt contest to win awesome branded gear, and this Christmas in particular has had a crapload of free goodies that’s asking for your collection. I’m posting the entries sent into me to the moderators later today and we’ll be judging those over the next few days, so hang tight for that!

In terms of TSS and progress and things, it’s been a bit of a less impressive year. The site’s not been so active lately and 2007 has been more of a transitional period for us than anything else. Next year we’ll see some things come together properly, like the re-organisation of the TSS site, the completion of the new Sonic Show website (that’ll be first thing on our list of ‘to-do’s) and plenty more besides. I’ll be pursuing my journalism career much more than before, and with this I’ll be a little bit more set on sorting the site and everything else out. 2008 is going to be a pretty good year, let’s hope we can make it even better than this one just gone!

Make some new years resolutions that you’ll probably break later, be sure to go out and get completely wasted, and I’ll see you on the other side. Before I go, a massive thank you to a few people who without them couldn’t have made this year possible – Adam Tuff for his Sonic madness, the TSSNET and SSMB staff (every one of you) for your extraordinary efforts this year, B’man for his sexy codingness, Kevin Eva for his continued work in the links between community and SEGA in which I started in 2005, Roarey for just being totally awesome and having the time to dedicate to stuff no matter what the issue, and of course you guys – the members and visitors, who have stuck with us no matter what kind of bullshit we’ve had in the past.

Here’s to you. Go 2008!

Today’s Christmas update involves some updating of the Sonic Cartoons section at long last – Roarey Raccoon is deeply involved with writing up episode synopses for Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, and you can catch the first three episodes in the Cartoons > AoStH section. Down over in the DefChamba you can also download high quality versions of the AoStH opening and ending themes, plus the legendary ‘Sonic Sez’ from Episode 3 (that’s NO good).

In other news, to keep you up to date with what’s actually happening with the Sonic Site Awards to hand out, the award designer DarkNoise appears to have been having problems for the longest time with his art program, generally messing up both his plans and our plans to get those awards to the winners. Rest assured, the moment they’re all ready I’ll wing them direct like.

The Sonic Stadium has been going now for five years running. And during it’s lifespan it’s become the Number 1 source for anything related to Sonic the Hedgehog. Thanks guys! To show our appreciation, we’re holding a competition for our fifth anniversary. This is a small contest where you can win some very real prizes.

WHAT YOU CAN WIN:

We’ve recently reviewed Sonic Gems Collection on the Nintendo Gamecube, and you can win a copy of this rather spiffing compilation. However, you may be either bummed out that the European or American versions came castrated – or you may own your own copy already – which is why our prize is the super-cool Japanese Version. The Japanese copy of Gems includes all the features in the Western iterations, with the added bonuses of Bonanza Bros and the entire Streets of Rage series. We realise not many people will have Japanese Gamecubes to play this on, so we’ve thrown in a Datel Freeloader, which enables you to play any import game on your Gamecube with ease. Finally, what better method to play Sonic Gems Collection than with your very own Arcade Stick? After all, it’s better to play an authentic game of Sonic the Fighers. This stick is a third party stick that has been customised with Sonic the Fighters arcade cabinet artwork. You’ll be whupping Eggman in style!

Entrants had to submit a piece of creative writing about Sonic the Hedgehog. We had a ton of entries, people were clamouring for this prize, and we saw just how dedicated some of you guys are. You’re all fantastic Sonic fans, and that’s great to see. =) What made us particularly happy was the fact that we had quite a few entries from people around the 18-20 year old regions, it’s good to see some Sonic fans as old as some of us geezers here entering.

The one that pipped everyone to the post though, was CosmicFalcon from Southampton UK, using some of that classic British humour everyone keeps hearing about. CosmicFalcon decided to write a song to detail how much of a Sonic fan he was. It was such a fabulous composition, it had us in stitches. He also submitted an mp3 file of his song, cheeky fellow. We disregarded that and based our judging on the lyrics alone, although the MP3 is a hell of a listen. Here is CosmicFalcon’s entry below. Imagine singing this to the music of the original Mega Drive Sonic the Hedgehog credits theme:

Sonic is my favourite hedgehog,
I love him much more than Shadow.
Come on Tails and come on Knuckles,
Let’s all have one more adventure.
Together we’ll foil Eggman
Bust his bots and destroy his plan.
Oh snap there’s that effing faker,
Once again he has amnesia!

I know, he is a hedgehog.
And I know that he’s coloured blue.
But I don’t care, I still love him.
For he is my childhood hero.

Let’s go Sonic!
Do a spindash!
Hit the signpost!
Run like The Flash!
Collect more rings!
Get one hundred!
That’s a 1up!
Okay, let’s go!

He’s been with me so long,
Back to the very beginning.
My good old Mega Drive
Is always ready
For me to play.

I’m his biggest fan!
I play all
Of his games!
Even if they are so very crap.
I don’t care, they’re still fun!

Sonic the Hedgehog!
He’s my favourite Hedgehog!
All of the others,
They just cannot compare!
I’ll be his fan for all of time!
This is the end of my song!

If you can’t imagine, you can listen!
Click here to listen to the song that won it.

Congratulations CosmicFalcon, there’s a Japanese Sonic Gems Collection, Freeloader and custom Arcade Stick being wung your way soon. Your song was so good it made our mates at SEGA UK laugh out milk through their noses. Maybe not their noses.

While we had so many entries, we can’t possibly display them all here (we don’t wanna be accused of favouritism amongst all else!), so we will note the people who kindly entered the competition below (in no particular order):

Rally the Cheetah (Jenny Pledger) – sent in a great story called ‘A Hero’.
Hunter Boone – Told us about his first Christmas with Sonic. He has a ‘few’ Tails plushies.
Cody Tucker – Very almost won it with his touching account of what Sonic represents.
Latrell Kidd – Told us all about his game collection, and lots of cheats. ^^
MikeII(2) Gremillion – Gave a great account of how Sonic has been a role model.
TaShara Lee – Wrote a fun story about being trapped in Sonic Adventure 2. Sonic Wind!
Anthony Cavallo – sent us a nice empty email. =D
Andrew Robertson – Used great imagination in creating a prologue to Sonic the Hedgehog.
William Parsons – Impressed us with a Sonic Haiku. Not easy to do.
Brandon Roberts – A poem which tugged at our heartstrings. We thought we were Scrooges.
Chili Dawg – A fellow SSMB member recalls the ‘gap’ of Sonic that many fans such as us experienced during the Saturn era.
Tailsy the Fox – Sonic fans need dedication, and a lotta dosh. True.
Tyler – Submitted a sprite he edited from Super Sonic. Looks cool.
Foster Hudgens – He’s the biggest Sonic fan in his school.
Stephen Skinner – Gets irate over ‘true Sonic fans’. Could agree more.
Eleanor Spring – A wicked analysis of what makes a Sonic fan.
Scott Reed – A hilarious ‘transcript’ featuring old favourite characters like Bark, Bean and Mighty.
Brad Hughes – An account of his life as a Sonic fan.
Jared Curry – A brief history of SONICTEAM and the success of Sonic. Great stuff.
Dean Cantrell – Tommy the Poet Master’s made a great little Ode involving cowboys.
Robert Lino – No doubt about it, he loves Sonic, and Sonic CD. And TSS too – thanks. ^^
Aaron Foster – Got back into Sonic after Mega Collection. Right on. =)
Andrew Hawkes [Hawkz] – A fabulous story of someone with Sonic on the brain. Reminds us of us.
Jerry Lynn Alexander II – Tails can fly, somebody just got fried. Genius. =D

But don’t worry cowboys and indians, your work isn’t lost forever. As a consolation your work will feature prominently in the Articles & Events section, a page each to your name. They’ve all been fabulous entries, and making the decision was really hard going. But congrats to CosmicFalcon and well done to everyone that took part!

Final words: Thanks to Psychobob for providing the Arcade Stick, Phr0zen for the Sonic the Fighters artwork for the stick, and to all that entered the contest!

I promised some concrete information, and here we go – unfortunately we have some interesting news, some exciting news and some bad news =P

First of all, SAGE. The event will run from 3rd – 9th July, TSS will be there fully supporting the thing. Just to clarify to those who don’t know, SAGE is NOT a physical event. It’s not located in America, or the UK, or whatever. It’s all ONLINE. So attending is free, all you need is access to teh internets. Which you obviously have, innit.

Second of all, Sonic Site Awards 2005. Solids: The event will begin the week AFTER SAGE, so’s not to clash with the event. The awards will be broken up into bitesize categories (we’re getting way too many to just simply list now), which also allows for a special “category” regarding the newly-born Sonic Elite Awards. There will be categories including brand new awards, involving SSMB awards, SSN awards, and a special category in association with Sonic Fan Games HQ and SAGE. Hopefully SSA attention will also head to SFGHQ/SAGE and rejuvenate the fangame community somewhat. ClawtheEchog is helping me out organising the SSMB awards (they will be carefully created).

Thirdly, some bad news, regarding the SEGASonic Radio purchasable CD of The Sonic Hour: Season One. We are nowhere near compiling the files for CD Quality, so you will not be able to buy it for now I’m afraid. Give it a week or two – AlextheGreat made a point of making the music high quality stereo, which to achieve is easier said than done… The 11kHz recording is slower than a standard 44kHz music file, so the only way to do this is to re-record the entire broadcast with high quality music instead. The recordings of our voices are unfortunately quite weak in comparison to the high quality music on the CD, but that is something we really cannot help, unless you want us to remake the entire series (NOT going to happen, guys =P). So yeah, currently re-recording some 9+ hours of TSH content for your delectation, so we hope you can wait a bit longer.

Operation Grandslam is coming along great – I’ve just been designing and thinking of ideas TSS Accounts could be manipulated in terms of what can be added. Maybe you’ll have a chance to use your Account to gloat to your friends…

How’s it going, chaps? Exams are all over for me, so it’s onto a fully packed Summer we have for you. We got “lots” of content to hand you over the next few weeks, as well as coverage on SAGE and the ACMI Sonic Exhibit (of which TSS is being profiled in) and the Sonic Site Awards 2005 in July… and let’s not forget our roundup of the season in September when we bring you a “TSS In Tokyo” special, wherein I will be taking my first real proper holiday since beginning this site – in Japan. Since most of my tourings will be gaming, SEGA and Sonic related, it’ll do no harm to record my journey here when I return. And that’s not even going into The Sonic Stadium’s FIFTH birthday in October…

If that wasn’t enough, we’re hard at work pumping out what we’re calling “Operation Grandslam”. Those with a historical eye will remember two years ago, I started this very same project and announced it as the Sonic Smash Cards. This is still the case, but there are now more elements in the mix that justifies the mystery of this regeneration project. It’s going to be a lot of fun, let me tell you.

So, expect stuff and stuff to be added tomorrow, and details on SAGE and the Sonic Site Awards ’05 sometime on Friday or during the weekend. It’s an exciting summer season, so stick with TSS.

Blimey, it’s almost as if one event ends (E3) and another one is about to begin. I’m talking, of course, about the Sonic Amateur Games Expo (SAGE), of which The Sonic Stadium is proudly supporting alongside a roster of other Sonic sites. For those who don’t know, SAGE is like the E3 of Sonic Fangames. Interested in making a fangame? Join the Workshops and Tutorials. Wanna play some fangames? Come along, see the booths. Seeings as it’s all a part to help the fangaming community grow, TSS as well as others like Sonic HQ are more than happy to help spread awareness of this fab event.

However, TSS is also doing special things with the people behind SAGE and SFGHQ – specfically, I’m working closely with Smidge to help get awareness for SAGE as broad as possible, alongside other great plans. SFGHQ and SAGE, I can announce today, will also have a special Category in this year’s Sonic Site Awards event also (SSA-05 will, incidentally, take place a week after the SAGE event).

SAGE is plodding along for a good launch in early July. Hopefully you won’t be able to move without hearing the SAGE name – if you haven’t tried fangames, I suggest you do so at SFGHQ]. Seriously good stuff, and you can check out the SAGE happenings on TSS (yet again, TSS will exclusively cover the SAGE event this year) and the SAGE website itself:
http://www.sagexpo.org/

Go. Now. Play fangames.