The Supreme Topic of 'Other' Knowledge.

The Japanese Sonic Twitter just shared a new render for Sonic's 34th birthday.
The glow up is insane, thank god they learned how to actually use this model (And shrunk the hands)

 

Now that's a proper render.

 

Finally, some fucking good render.

 

More questionable-looking merch spotted on FBM. What in the world is the background based on?

 

When I was a youngling I watched the TV adverts in Sonic Jam countless times. I had no idea what they were saying, but at the time, the merchandise was fascinating and exotic.



Today I "solved" a "mystery" - what is this noise after FUNKY ACTION



Sonic Bingo Present (ソニック ビンゴプレゼント). It's Bingo... with Sonic. How do you play Bingo with Sonic?


You uh... stick bits of game manuals on a piece of paper. Or something. Say what now?



Turns out Sega manuals have cutty-out-bits (the triangle in the bottom left). Collect two or three, make a line, and you might win something. Interestingly this isn't just a Sonic thing - most(?) Sega games from the period have these triangles, presumably in preparation for competitions like these.

anyway 31 years too late but

bag pls

 

Must still be a common practice as I’ve seen them in Gunpla manuals as well:

 

Truly exceptional



Found some scans of... something, and turns out the three games I picked (after squinting at a low resolution video) were the only combination that doesn't net you anything. Well done me.

A is "Sonic Pin Badge Set" (ソニックピンバッジセット)
B is Sonic uh... "Daypack"(?) Depack? (ソニック デーパック)

My instinct was that Tails was standing behind a flag of the colours of JEF United (which Sega sponsored at the time)... but they're red-yellow-green, not green-yellow-red.

So it must be the old civil flag of Ethiopia, at the time in use after the fall of the Derg in 1991. I didn't think I'd be reading that on Wikipedia today.

 

Nothing crazy, but still cool to look at - a reading sample of last month's Sonic the Hedgehog / SEGA feature of CGWORLD:

 

Horns on Chameleons are very common in multiples, but apparently there are only 2 types of chameleons who are male who have 1 single horn. So unless Espio is a girl, he is one of these types:

Trioceros conirostratus
Trioceros marsabitensis

 

In Sonic 3 & Knuckles, there are unused graphics for a chute that should appear after Knuckles's Launch Base Zone boss(es), but doesn't. Please click that link for context.

To explain anyway, up to and including the 0525 prototype of Sonic & Knuckles, Knuckles only fights the Beam Rocket boss, whereas later builds have him fight Big Arm after Beam Rocket is destroyed. In such older builds, once Beam Rocket is destroyed, a chute (or "exit" according to labels found in Sonic & Knuckles Collection) is spawned at the bottom of the Eggmobile. After the score tally is complete, EggRobo drops a bomb that comes out of that chute, which blows up and sends Knuckles to Mushroom Hill Zone. Later builds have EggRobo drop the bomb as before, but without the chute. According to the Sonic 3 Unlocked blog, the chute was completely removed, possibly because that was easier than fiddling with when it gets spawned. However, the chute apparently does get spawned by the Big Arm boss! It's just hard to see because it's behind the boss and the graphics aren't loaded, but it's there! However, it only appears after Knuckles lands the final hit but before what I will call for the rest of this post The End: the music fades out, Big Arm's pieces fall off, and the EggMobile flies upwards. Once The End occurs, bit 4 of Big Arm's RAM byte $38 is set. When the chute sees this as it runs what skdisasm calls Child_Draw_Sprite2, it promptly deletes itself. Beam Rocket does not seem to set this bit, preventing the chute from despawning.

On a less interesting note, the Flame Shield will protect you from the flames at the bottom of Beam Rocket in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, but not Sonic 3 alone.

 

Yes, true gospel right here. Looking at you, Mega Man X. 28:01


Their personas are so close to the characters, I love it.

That was a good booth, believe it or not.

Reminder: this guy sang this:

 

Saw this posted on TCRF yesteday, there is a hidden signature from Mazin in the Sonic CD intro. You can't really see it normally, because the palette obscures it, but there's a hidden object on one frame, it's the frame where Sonic spins around the spire as he's running. Right in the middle of his spin, there is apparently what looks like a blank frame that's solid brown for one single frame. If you edit the palette, the hidden object become visible:



CXX is Masato Nishimura's signature, you can also see it in Quartz Quadrant Zone.

 

peep that tiny け at the corner

 

This month's interview was with David Javelosa! And a few Sonic things happened.
Interview: David Javelosa (2025-05-07) by Alexander Rojas

-Another undocumented Sister Sonic-like project in Multimedia Studio's Sonic and the Wolf
-Some new Spinball anecdotes
-A clean rip of the Summer CES 1993 Spinball demo
-Confirmation that SoA's utilization of Sonic characters was patterned after Disney, if we didn't have it already
-Confirmation that Coburn composed the first SMS demo's Sonic theme (the Green Hill one), and that his track from the second SMS demo utilizes GEMS Spinball instruments but doesn't appear to be an early Lava Powerhouse. But I'll have to ask Coburn about that himself.
-EDIT: I forgot, some Michael Jackson / Sonic 3 stuff! Javelosa says the MJ tracks that WERE included in the final game were "pushed to the back" in Zone order.

Special thanks to KatKuriN and MDTravis for their research and assistance!




I might be missing stuff, it was a big interview. Enjoy!

 

which makes sense, given that the "problematic" zones are the last three in Sonic 3

 

This lends credence to the idea that the MJ/Buxer tracks were rushed into the game between 1103 and S3 Final, rather than 1103 and S&KC music reflecting a change in direction.

 

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think that this really needs a Sonic Retro page?

Like, if the whole thing was originally conceptualized as a completely unrelated project and Sonic was only brought up briefly in one meeting, I think the whole page should be moved to the Peter and the Wolf Sega Retro page. Even Astropede doesn't have a page here, and that game's ties to the Sonic franchise are way more significant.

 

Yeah, this was my first thought. But the wiki has tons of individual pages that are essentially footnotes like that. I brought up Sister Sonic cause... why do we have a Sister Sonic page? Can't THAT just go on the Popful Mail page? Is it because there's more "effort" put into into the project? More "consideration"? More "intent"? At what point do we draw the line, and by what standard? We wouldn't NOT want to cover even the smallest proposals and pitches. It's the reason we have a dedicated Sister Sonic page and not a redirect to a Popful Mail subsection. And I don't feel comfortable saying "only Sonic projects that went past a certain point get pages."

If I was a Sonic researcher, I'd want this page on Sonic Retro. But I really don't care to argue where this goes. Nothing personal Jaxer, I like working with you. Thanks all.

EDIT: Did this sound mean? I'm terrible with confrontation. I'm sorry Jaxer <3

 

I do see your point. But in that case, we need an Astropede page too.

 

It's tricky because it might literally just be "I've had an idea". No formal documentation, let alone a tangable product that could be played.

So it might just be a story for the David Javelosa page.