Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board: Azukara - Viewing Profile - Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board

Dunno if this has been seen by anyone here yet.



Sonic Spitball is a 3-part long discussion on deconstructing the concepts of Sonic and what exactly was going downhill about it, done by Seumidh "Shay" MacDonald, artist from Sonic the Comic Online. This first part covers the topic of gameplay while two later parts will cover story/characters and tone. And yes, you're reading that right: it's about an hour and a half long.

Now, I wouldn't usually share something like this because these kind of rants and raves are a dime a dozen, but most of the time they are usually either far off the mark, are really light on criticism in areas due to fanboyism, or are overwhelmingly negative schpiels focused on sensationalizing how bad Sonic is (like nearly any ordinary sound-minded critic/game design analyzer usually would do).

This dude, however, manages to capture every detail with not only what I believe to be extreme accuracy, but also amazing insight on why certain things and don't work. The guy sort of proves that he knows his stuff on how games work, how their mechanics stack up amongst one another, and how people react to playing them. It doesn't beat around the bush or settle for superficial things like "Sonic needs no friends and just speed and no gimmicks and classic designs and robotnik" etc as it's back up argument. Instead, it simply hones in on the genius behind what made Sonic almost universally seen as good, regardless of specific preferences, and highlights just where it started going sour.

I don't want to end up spoiling it all, but I found myself agreeing with this guy on just about everything he said, and then some. He does an amazing analysis that I feel needs to be shared, because it really does help shush all the arguments of "was Sonic ever good to begin with", "Sonic can't work in 3D", "the best kind of Sonic is just going fast and collecting rings" and various other phrases and ideas that get blabbed on about throughout the gaming community.

It's the 'Sequelitis' - esque public deconstruction I feel the series has needed (except without the mass bias someone like Egoraptor would have), and I thought you guys would like to sit back for a bit and see it.

Repost from SSMB, via me.

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Sure someone would like to pull some info out of this around here, too. Apparently has some insight on Mega Drive development from that one guy I can't really of the name to. Forgive me, I love this kind of stuff but I'm not that well-versed on the people involved with the development of Sega consoles. Maybe you guys would really like this?

SWR's a 3D Sonic fangame being made with the base of Xaklse's SonicGDK engine.

And hey! it's still in development!

Since about early 2014 it's been going through some renovations and reorganizing for the sake of being not only a better game, but a better handled one. Its been inactive for a while due to not knowing where to go previously, but after rethinking how to handle making the game combined with finding a steady way of balancing it and our (the team's) lives beyond it, the game is making more progress and solid plans than we ever have. We may even have actual stuff to show soon, before the year's over!

The only thing we're worried about at the moment is finding a level designer that can help us build layouts for our stages. Someone who can help draw out stage layouts that resemble a page out of Sonic Adventure, or even maybe Robo Blast 2; and also help piece together some set pieces that we've already drawn out and designed. Besides that, we're already working on that as it is, so as slow and steady as it comes, its getting there.

As for anyone else who's just along for the party, keep your eyes peeled. Mr. World Runner's Wild Ride™ is getting ever closer to the station. Choo choo.

(Old, outdated post (Feb 2013)):

http://sonicgenerationart.com/

So apparently there's an art show in Philadelphia, PA called the "Sonic Generation Art Show" that's coming along around December 2 and will last throughout then to the end of December. To quote the website itself..

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Tons of really neat pieces of artwork being shown (such as this one shown above); anyone near Philly gonna go?

There was a game for the Sega CD in 1992, known as Wonderdog. For a picture just to clarify, here's what he looked like:
<img src="http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/bigboxshots/5/588015_61762_front.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />

Anyways, whenever I saw what he looked like, I immediately remembered something from earlier on in my childhood. My grandfather has a VHS head cleaner that features this same character, and he runs across the screen with a brush as it shows him supposedly cleaning the VHS player, while a Japanese woman says during the cleaning, "When Wonder Dog with stop mark plate appears, push stop button", or something of that nature.

Just how rare is this object? I've looked up information about this head cleaner all over the place, and I can only find very few results that feature anyone acknowledging it exists, but alas there is no video footage or snapshots of this thing in action, let alone for sale on eBay or anything like that. I'm not sure what to think about it, but I have a slight feeling that such an obscure Sega CD character on such a (supposedly) rare VHS head cleaner can be of some good collector's worth.

Does anyone else seem to have this exact same thing I'm talking about?