Are you from the UK? Do you remember an old gaming TV show on CITV called Bad Influence? No? Then you were either too young to remember or living under a huge rock. Bad Influence was the coolest TV show of the 90’s, you just couldn’t wait to get home from school and watch it. No-one had the internet to keep up with the latest videogame news, previews, reviews and gameplay video’s – sure, we had our magazines but to see games in action we needed our TV shows.

The show was presented by Andy Crane and Violet Berlin and contained news, previews, reviews(from actual gamers), reports on the latest technology, U.S. coverage, reports from the latest gaming events, cheats from Nam Rood and competitions. It was awesome!

Anyway, what has all this got to do with Sonic you ask? Well, the show covered the early console days back when Sega and Nintendo were rivals. Sonic features a number of times on the show and thanks to amazing James Osborne who has managed to get permission from Patrick Titley at Yorkshire Television(who own the show) the public now have access to a new website and a YouTube channel for the show and it’s episodes.

Sonic 2 proved to be very popular on the show, in Episode 4 their panel gave the game 2 5/5’s in their review. In the same episode Violet show’s a copy of the first Sonic character design sketches handed to her by creator Mr.Kanari. It’s the same sketches we’ve seen around the net for ages now but still cool to see an official copy.

Andy Crane got to visit the Future Entertainment Show where SEGA were in attendance allowing the public to get their hands on both the 16 Bit and 8 Bit versions of Sonic 2 for the first time ever in Episode 3 – Part 1(8:40, Future show begins) Part 2(0:04 Sonic 2 segment begins). You can also see a couple of the first official SEGA Sonic and Tails costumes, Tails suit has bushy eye brows for some reason.

In Episode 8 Violet visit’s SEGA Japan HQ to look at SEGA’s arcade machines and meet’s the head of the Sonic 2 project team who’s name couldn’t be revealed due to security reasons(anyone who recognises him, let me know by PM over at the SSMB). Violet is shown alot of Sonic 2’s design sketches for the Zone’s, 2 of which are shown up close in the episode. A cool Sonic statue/model can also be seen on the desk(Do want very muchly). The SEGA visit starts at 6:14 and the Sonic 2 bit starts at 6:42 just after the funny sleepy SEGA employee at 6:40.

Sonic Spinball got reviewed in Series 2: Episode 9 and given 2 5/5’s.

Sonic & Knuckles got reviewed too and given 2 4/5’s.

So, have any of you seen/remenber this show? Do any of you guys new to the show like it? What are your thoughts on Sonic 2 zone design sketches?
Let us know in the SSMB topic.