Hey everybody, I came here to see if any Sonic old-heads can help me! I found this tumblr post featuring a quote supposedly from a blog post on December 16, 2006 by Shun Nakamura, the director of Sonic 06. It's a lore dump about Silver's psychokinesis, and where he got his golden cuffs. It has some differing details, so it might be from an early draft of the game, but I do find it interesting (especially the Sky Sanctuary connection). I'll share it here in case it gets taken down. However, it could easily be fake. The source they provided is a link to "https://shunnakamura.sonicteam.jp/archives/2006/12/16/entry185.html", which doesn't currently exist and isn't archived on the Wayback Machine. I've searched around, and so far Google says this tumblr post is the only place the URL has ever been posted (besides others' ongoing research into it). There's also some weird things about it, like how it uses "sonicteam.jp" instead of "sonicteam.com", or how Shun Nakamura allegedly has his very own subdomain on Sonic Team's website for a blog. It's a little fishy, and these facts alone may be enough to debunk it. I messaged OP on tumblr and they claimed they got the quote from a friend on a forum (text only, no screenshot). They say this friend has been on the internet for a long time, doesn't know enough Japanese to write it themselves, and swears it's real. Oddly, this friend had their own headcanon that Silver got his powers entirely from his cuffs, which this source even refutes, so why would they fabricate a fake source that debunks their own headcanon? It's something to consider. So, has anyone here ever heard of Shun Nakamura or other staff having blogs? Has anyone else heard of this lore? Is it a hoax? Any help is appreciated.
Automatically debunked by one simple fact; If they really gave him his own domain, they would've called it "nakamurasyun", not "shunnakamura". I know how they would've done it because they've absolutely done it before. (2:28) Alright, I kid, but the truth is that when it comes to Sega, typically anyone with a storied history on Sega (even if minor) would typically have a website, and not just a blog. Whether it'd be for projects, internet things, portfolios, etc. In the early to mid 2000s it wasn't uncommon for artists of any walk in Japan to just have a website. With Sega though, they tended to just bundle everything on the main site by cutting out the middleman and showing their employee's work directly. Obviously I'd have to dig for it, but I recall that they would just ask the OGs specific questions so that they could just dump it on their website relating to the game they're talking about (no matter how niche). Most of these links still work after 2006, by the way lmfao When social media was the big thing, several Sega artists and composers hopped on it making sporadic posts saying stuff like "Oh hey here's this thing I made in like 1989". We even have a thread about that thing. It wouldn't be out of the question if Nakamura had a dedicated interview section on the Sega website (infact he did), but it would just be on sega.jp. I don't seem to recall if he ever ran a blog; I think we would've known about that thing sooner since, you know, 06, but it doesn't seem like he did. He DID have an interview on Sonic's UGC of all things where he talks about the then recent 06 but I don't know if that was taken from elsewhere
It's super fake. Shun Nakamura did have a blog about Sonic 2006, called Soleanna News: https://sonic.sega.jp/sonic/soleanna/index.html There was also a Sonic Channel staff blog that listed updates to the Sonic Channel site: https://web.archive.org/web/20070206182029/http://www.c-player.com/ac38141/message/200612 No references on either to a separate Shun Nakamura blog that supposedly had 185 entries without a single one being captured by the Wayback Machine.
sonicteam.jp is a legitimate URL, but archive.org only has one capture of it in 2012 before it starts redirecting to sonicteam.com in 2013. The 2012 capture is a pretty smoothed-down product/advertising page. It strikes me as odd there are no captures prior to 2012 but it was apparently registered by SEGA in 2003 so its not outside the realm of possibility that it was in use before then. That said, sonicteam.com was in use in 06 as a Japanese site so like. Having a separate .jp domain with different stuff would have been kind of weird/redundant I would think? Unless it was used as a more personal space like this supposed blog would suggest. I did actually find a mini-blog Nakamura wrote on the old Sonic 06 sub-site, which includes an entry about Silver, but it doesn't share any text with what is cited in the Tumblr post. idk. This seems like a weird and insignificant thing to try to fake, and the text itself doesn't have any red flags in it that stand out to me as obvious tells of forgery. But its definitely suspicious the URL seems to have been plucked from the ether. Hopefully someone who was around in the fanbase at the time will know more.
So it sounds to me like it's probably fake, which is a little disappointing. But who knows. Idk. There are lots of old Sonic creator blogs to look at, so that's still interesting. Thanks for all the help so far. Any other perspectives and opinions are also welcome!
