Shattering any sort of barrier from the 1990s, SEGA of America, SEGA Europe, Nintendo of America and Nintendo of Europe GmbH have announced that they will be partnering up to bring some major Sonic love to the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS over the coming years.
What does this mean overall? Nintendo is set to get three big Sonic titles exclusively to themselves, with two confirmed as the recently announced Sonic Lost World and Mario and Sonic at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games. The third title has yet to be announced, but it would be hardly surprising if it was next year’s yearly big title.
This doesn’t mean non-Nintendo gamers are out of luck. Sonic will continue to appear on these, though it may only be through smaller digital titles, such as the recently released remastered Sonic 1 on iOS and Android.
On today’s Nintendo Direct, Satoru Iwata has announced the upcoming 3D Sonic title Sonic: Lost World. Not much was shown, but we did get this art shot (click for full size):
We also got one other intriguing piece of information…
Sega Sammy released their financial reports for the company today, and it turns out the company did rather well. Of note, the company posted a net profit of ¥33.5 billion, or about $331 million, which is an annual growth of 53.3 percent. However, Sega Sammy’s operating profit decreased year-on-year by 67.3 percent, down to ¥19.1 billion ($189 million). Majority of this was through the sales of “investment securities” and transfers of employees’ pension benefits.
That’s all well and good if you’re financially oriented and looking to invest in Sega, but you’re here for game sales number to shamelessly slap people on message boards with! While physical retail game sales were down, causing the company to consider refocusing efforts more toward smartphone and digital titles, Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed zoomed across the finish line with 1.36 million units sold globally. No platform-by-platform break down was provided, but that’s still a rather strong number for the shape-shifting kart racer.
On top of that, Sega broke down plans for the 2014 fiscal year, saying that they plan to ship 11 games on PC, 7 on Wii U, 7 on PS3, 6 on 3DS, 5 on Vita, 4 on Xbox 360, and 2 on PSP.
While no doubt at least one of those will be a Sonic title of some sort on nearly every platform, what surprises us more is the PSP still getting some love. Keep on trucking, little guy!
For a more thorough breakdown, hit up our sister site SEGAbits. She’s just as pretty as we are, promise.
What can you say about launch day games? They’re usually the sloppiest, trashiest bits of data to hit a system if they’re not from a first party developer. It’s unfortunate that this is so with All-Stars Racing Transformed on Wii U. It seems a bug has been reported that essentially makes the game unplayable.
Those starting off the tour mode in single player find themselves at an impasse on the first boost challenge stage when the checkpoints you must pass through to extend time fail to load, essentially making the level on all difficulties unbeatable. There’s no getting around the stage either, leaving Wii U owners high and dry on the game.
This seems to affect all Wii U consoles that downloaded the update patch for the game upon boot up. Deleting the update data causes the system to redownload it upon booting up the game, and taking it offline will cause the system to complain at you to get an Internet connection to play the game.
If you’re deciding still which version to get, we highly advise staying away from the Wii U port until further notice. Hopefully Sumo Digital and Sega are on top of this and working up another patch, but such a gross oversight on a release game is reprehensible and lazy. Come on, Sega, this isn’t 2006 anymore.
In the heart of San Diego as the blood from the San Diego ComicCon pumps through the city, the House of Blues was bumping last night with the ’80s Hair Guitar stylings of Crush 40 belting out fan favourites and all new tracks, and a grand outpouring of love for the spiky Blue Blur from all 800 or so in attendance.
And Sonic Retro was there in force to experience it.
After a little meetup at a nearby Yard House with some of our older members and a few other fans, we made our way to House of Blues to discover that the line was already stretching around three corners of a block with people eager to attend Sega of America’s Second Annual celebration of all things Sonic. And while those of us in line joked about the stranger sides of the fandom, we ran into a familiar face frantically scurrying around the block to make sure the line was moving: Sega of America’s Sonic Generations Brand Manager Aaron “Ruby Eclipse” Webber. After some small talk, we left him on his way to continue making sure the line was moving at a steady pace.
As a little bit of a game after letting him go, a few of us wagered on a social experiment: if the six of us belted out loudly the first four lines of Live and Learn, how many people would join in? The result was far greater than expected and can only be truly enjoyed by the video captured of it. Keep an eye out here as we’ll post it once I’m able to get on an Internet service that can handle video uploading.
With that, we went inside the club.
Another year rolls around and like clockwork, it’s time for another Summer of Sonic – my 4th and the event’s 5th. With not just a new venue this year but an entirely new town in Brighton, and with all the tickets selling out in the space of around 5 minutes, the show was even more hotly anticipated than last year. So, what’s the skinny, you ask? Well, dear audience, please read on.
With E3 now in full swing, the buzz has been on what new reveals will headline the next year, particularly on Nintendo’s new Wii U. One such game includes Sega and Sumo Digital’s newest party racer in Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing Transformed.
In usual E3 flare, Sega kept a surprise announcement for the show as they revealed a car hidden under wraps smack in the middle of their booth. Game Trailers TV blew the secret early while interviewing NASCAR racer Danica Patrick that she will be a playable character in the upcoming game in a Sega-themed NASCAR car. Patrick will also apparently be driving this car in NASCAR events to help promote the game.
And here we were hoping that Sega pulled the trigger on having Daytona USA‘s Hornet as its own racer. At any rate, stay tuned for more E3 updates as they roll in as our own Slingerland is on hand at the show.
After much fan demand, Sega has begun releasing several of their Sonic series soundtracks on to Apple’s iTunes service. Most of these albums, though recently released, aren’t too easy to track down and import for those looking to legally own the music, never mind worrying about bootlegs.
The albums now available are the 20th Anniversary editions of Sonic CD, Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2 and Sonic Heroes, as well as “The Best of Crush 40: Super Sonic Songs”, “The Works” (Jun Senoue‘s standalone album featuring several original songs and some Sonic music), and Sonic Colors ViViD SOUND × HYBRiD COLORS, the last one lovingly divided into three volumes for all three discs (Disc 2 and Disc 3 can be found at those links.) Sega further states that the soundtrack to Sonic The Hedgehog 4‘s episodes will also be touching down on iTunes in the future.
It should be noted that the 20th Anniversary album for the two Adventure titles aren’t as all encompassing as their original releases, which may turn some fans off. However, this is the best chance short of importing to show support for the musicians that worked hard to keep series’ reputation for good music alive and well.