Browsing Tag

25th Anniversary

Podcasts

SEGAbits Swingin’ Report Show: Interview with Cook & Becker CEO Maarten Brands – Sonic the Hedgehog 25th Anniversary Art Book


The SEGAbits Swingin’ Report Show is back, bringing you an interview with Maarten Brands, CEO of Cook & Becker who is behind the upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog 25th Anniversary Art Book! In this, his first public interview talking about the book, Maarten goes into the history of the international art dealership Cook & Becker, how the SEGA partnership began and what fans can expect from the Sonic art book.
The book releases soon and comes in two editions, which you can pre-order now:
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 25TH ANNIVERSARY ART BOOK – COLLECTOR’S EDITION
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 25TH ANNIVERSARY ART BOOK – STANDARD HARDCOVER
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Merchandise

First look at the official ‘Sonic The Hedgehog 25th Anniversary’ art book from Cook & Becker – available for pre-order

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Thanks to the next-gen art dealers at Cook & Becker, we have a first look at the upcoming Sonic The Hedgehog 25th Anniversary art book via an in-depth gallery of images as well as a full press release. So let’s get down to it! The art book, the first ever official art book and design history for the long running series, encapsulates 25 years of history. The book will be made available in a limited Special Collector’s Edition as well as a Standard Hardcover Edition. The Special Collector’s Edition features an outer box, a special inner sleeve that folds into a display stand for the book and an exclusive newly drawn matted art giclee print by Sonic Team’s Yuji Uekawa. The Collector’s Edition is limited to 2,500 copies and sells for $120/€120 respectively. As a pre-order bonus, Cook & Becker offers a 10% discount on the Collector’s Edition if it is ordered before February 2017. The Standard Edition, meanwhile, retails for $45/€45 and consists of the book itself.
Let’s talk about the book! Officially licensed, the book (310mm H x 275mm W) will feature 200+ pages of images and text, including interviews with key Sonic designers including Yuji Naka, Takashi Iizuka and Yuji Uekawa. As seen in the image gallery below, you can expect to find concept art, promotional art, 3D renders, box art and – as revealed in our recent article – original official art and rare collectibles submitted by fans (pending approval from Cook & Becker and SEGA, of course).
After the break, check out a full press release detailing the book as well as a gallery of several images showing off the ins and outs of the book as well as the Special Collector’s Edition. Don’t forget to pre-order the book today at the official Cook & Becker site!
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Miscellaneous

Sonic 25th Anniversary Art Book Announced

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Cook & Becker are working together with SEGA on an official Sonic art and design book. The book will cover the entire history of the blue hedgehog, and includes never-before-published artwork. So it’s not just stuff that you can already find on our wiki. Besides that, the book includes new interviews with Yuji Naka, Takashi Iizuka, Kazuyuki Hoshino, Yuji Uekawa, and other key designers and artists who have worked on the franchise.
The art book won’t ship until early 2017, but people will be able to pre-order it sometime within the next two months. It will be available worldwide as both standard- and collector’s editions.
This isn’t the first time that Cook & Becker has worked with SEGA. Last year they started selling a series of official SEGA art prints made by various artists, including a Sonic print.
[Source]

Miscellaneous

The Humble Bundle Celebrates Sonic’s 25th Anniversary

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Is your Sonic library on Steam lacking a few titles? Why wait for a Steam sale when you can set your own price and meet payment tiers in the latest Humble Bundle featuring a trove of Sonic games that can be redeemed on Steam which includes Sonic Lost World and an exclusive T-shirt for $35. Games such as Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, Sonic Adventure 2 and Sonic Generations all feature their DLC included as well, except for our good buddy Simon from Yogscast in Transformed. The SEGA Genesis and Mega Drive games also take advantage of the updated emulator that supports ROM hacks as well.
If you’re not familiar with how the Humble Bundle works, you can set the price on what you would pay for the games and receive a Steam validation code for each game covered by your payment. You can also pay above two different tiers with one being the average paid amongst different users on the Humble Bundle. Previous Humble Bundles included mobile Sonic titles and the Archie Sonic comic series. This marks the first time Sonic games on Steam appeared in a Humble Bundle set.
Be sure to check out the Humble Bundle page on more information. More games will be added to the bundle in the near future which do not require additional payment. Hit the jump to see what games are available in the bundle.
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Miscellaneous

Watch the Sonic 25th Anniversary Panel at SXSW Live on Twitch


Edit: 3/23/2016 You can now watch the full panel courtesy of the SEGAbits channel.
The Sonic 25th Anniversary panel at SXSW will begin just a few hours from when this post is published. And thankfully SXSW will be hosting a live stream of the panel, which you can see above. The Sonic section of the stream will start at at 1:30pm PDT / 3:30pm CDT / 4:30pm EDT / 8:30pm GMT / 9:30pm CET.
The panel will feature Aaron Webber, Austin Keys, Mike Pollock, Roger Craig Smith, Takashi Iizuka and Yuji Naka, and will focus on the history of the franchise. The panel’s description also teases that they’ll “look to the future”, though Sega has already clarified that they don’t plan to announce any new games at the panel. Aside from that, Aaron Webber has teased that the meaning of the numbers on the Game Grumps photo from a couple of months ago will be revealed.
Whatever the panel is going to be about, with that selection of guests it’s sure to at least be something worth watching.

Comics

Archie Releasing New Classic Sonic One-Shot this July

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With the 25th anniversary coming up, it’s only fitting that Archie would do something special for the Sonic the Hedgehog comic. Today, through Comic Book Resource, Archie announced a new Sonic comic based around “Classic Sonic.” Dubbed Sonic: Mega Drive, the one-shot comic is written by Ian Flynn, with illustrations from Tyson Hesse and will be released on July 6th, 2016. The story is planned to be set after Sonic and Knuckles, with Tails, Knuckles and Amy starring alongside Sonic. Hit the jump for Archie’s disclosure of the comic.
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Game News, Miscellaneous

New Sonic 25th Anniversary Event/Release Details From Toy Fair

Toy Fair 2016
Because SEGA decided that they’re no longer releasing new Sonic games annually to give developers more time to properly finish the games, there hasn’t been a big new Sonic game in the past year. The Sonic fanbase doesn’t seem to be used to not having a new game to complain about play for longer than a year, meaning that they’re desperate for news. So desperate that they’d even look for info at the Toy Fair.
That being said: we’re part of that Sonic fanbase, and we also happen to be just as desperate, so time to look for new info at the Toy Fair. Thanks to the Flickr of Paul Nicholasi of Idle Hands, we know all the new details from the Tomy booth at the event. And it turns out that there’s quite a bit of new stuff to know about, though nothing about the new big 25th anniversary game everyone wants to know about. Continue Reading

Game News

Crush 40 “Might” Write New Songs for Sonic’s 25th Anniversary Game


Update: Johnny has since deleted this post from Facebook.
It looks like we may get more of Crush 40’s amazingly dumb but also still amazingly great songs in the 25th anniversary game. While answering fan questions on Facebook, Johnny Gioeli said this when asked about their next album:

When will there be news about the Crush 40 album?
~We are planning a few performances for 2016 to commemorate the anniversary of Sonic. We “might” participate in writing new songs for the anniversary game…stay tuned…

Really at this point it’s probably already been decided if they’ll be doing new songs for the game, so it’s looking pretty likely that that will actually happen. Meaning that it’s 2016 and we’re probably still getting Crush 40 songs in Sonic games. Really there’s no better way to start the year than knowing this.