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Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric

Opinion, Podcasts

SEGA Talk Podcast: Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric

On this SEGA Talk, we put on some sports tape and discuss the flagship video game for the Sonic Boom multimedia project: Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric! What were the project’s origins? Why was it a Wii U exclusive? And we settle the debate once and for all: which was worse? Rise of Lyric or Sonic 2006? Included in this discussion are new production details from Sonic Boom TV series writer Alan Denton.

[iTunes – Stitcher – YouTube – RSS – Download]

If you want to give us feedback, suggest a topic for the next podcast or want to ask a question for us to answer on the next episode you can add  them as a comment below or send theme directly to our email. Make sure you use subject line ‘SEGA Talk’ and as always, thanks for listening!

 

Miscellaneous

Summer Games Done Quick 2015 Speeds Off Tomorrow With Plenty of Sonic and SEGA

SGDQ2015
Another summer, another Summer Games Done Quick. If you’re not familiar with what the it is: basically it’s an event where a lot of speedrunners do live runs of various games for charity. In this case for Doctors Without Borders. And this year they’ll be streaming some Sonic games on the first day already.
You can expect speedruns of Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric, the neutral story in Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic’s story in Sonic Adventure DX: Director’s Cut on the first day, with an additional speedrun of Big the Cat’s story if a certain amount of money is donated. On the second day Shenmue II, the Castle of Illusion remake, Toejam & Earl, Streets of Rage 2 and Super Monkey Ball Deluxe will be played. Then we’re getting more Sonic on the fourth day with runs of Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean MachineSonic Triple Trouble, Sonic Advance and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 as well as the fantastic Sonic-inspired game Freedom Planet. Finally there’ll be speedruns of Chester Cheetah: Wild Wild Quest and Mega Man: The Wily Wars on the fifth day of the event.
Of course, these are only the SEGA games that’ll be played there. You can find the full schedule with times of when games will be played in your timezone here, along with details on which speedrunners are playing them and estimates of how long it will take to beat the games. Be sure to take a look at the stream and maybe even donate some money. I mean, more Big the Cat speedruns are never a bad thing.
Also, click on the link on the bottom of the site’s home page to get a neat little SEGA easter egg.

Game News

The Troubled Development of Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric Explained


Tamaki, writer for Unseen64, has made a video that sheds light on what went wrong during the development of Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric. And if you assumed that Big Red Button had to put up with a lot of crap that made it unreasonable to expect them to put out a good game, you’d be right.
The video explains various things that went wrong like how the studio had to switch from developing for next-gen hardware to the Wii U (which is why early footage looks better than the final game), bad working conditions and more. Be sure to give it a watch, especially if you thought that the game being so bad was just because of the developers being incompetent.
By the way, something I noticed while looking up the reveal trailer: SEGA made the video on their official Youtube page private. I wonder why…

Podcasts

SEGAbits & Sonic Retro present Boom Talkalaka #3: TV and Comics and Crossovers, oh my!


SEGAbits and Sonic Retro team up to bring you a podcast focused on SEGA’s Sonic Boom franchise! Hosted by Barry the Nomad of SEGAbits.com and David the Lurker of SonicRetro.org, Boom Talkalaka features discussion of the many aspects of Sonic Boom – from comics and episodes of the cartoon, to the video games and toys.
In this episode, Barry and David discuss an early version of Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric under the working title Sonic Synergy and take a look at concept art of elaborate in-store Sonic Boom displays. Also covered are the latest TV show episodes, the second comic book arc, the upcoming Worlds Unite comic book crossover, and we share our thoughts on the future of the new branch on the Sonic the Hedgehog tree.
[Download] [RSS]

Game News

Video Showing Early Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric Build Surfaces


It’s pretty clear that the development of Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric was troubled to say the least, and nothing shows this quite as well as seeing what the game used to look like. While we don’t know how much work was done on this version of the game, it’s pretty clear that the game was originally going to look a lot better graphically.
This isn’t the first time that we’ve seen this unused hub(?) world, but this is the first footage of the characters interacting with the environment. Which shows that it was playable at some point. This footage was found in the demo reel of character animator Tuan Nguyen, who was a junior animator on the project.

Community, Miscellaneous

FTCR to Stream Sonic Boom for Young Girl with Cancer

BoomCharity
This Saturday at 1pm EST/6pm GMT, the guys at Find the Computer Room will stream Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric to help raise money for Emily Monroe, a 3-year-old girl who has been diagnosed with cancer. Special guests lined up for the event include Mike Pollock and Cindy Robinson, among others.
FTCR member FTA has provided a video detailing everything that will go down:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD1ShRFesS4
The stream will take place on the FTCR Twitch page. If you would like to donate immediately, you can visit Emily’s GoFundMe page.

Retro Contests

Giveaway: Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric and Shattered Crystal

rise of lyric box thumbnail
[The following article was written by site member GerbilSoft]
It’s that time again: GerbilSoft gives away new Sonic games! This time, it’s Sonic Boom for Wii U and Nintendo 3DS.
The rules are simple. Send an email to me, GerbilSoft, with answers to the four questions listed below (and optionally the fifth question). If you answer all four questions correctly, you qualify for a chance to win one of these two games:

Two winners will be selected; the odds of winning depend on the number of correct entries.
Official Rules:

  • Participants will send their answers to the four questions below (plus optional fifth question) to [email protected], with subject: “Sonic Retro’s Sonic Boom Giveaway”. Entries must be sent by2014/11/06 11:59 PM EST (2014/11/07 04:59 AM UTC). (DON’T POST YOUR ANSWERS IN THE COMMENTS!)
  • The giveaway is open to all legal residents (13 years of age or older) of the United States, Canada (except Quebec), United Kingdom, and Australia (except ACT). Other countries may be eligible; check your local regulations.
  • Only one entry per person; make sure your answers are correct before you send your email!
  • Sonic Retro, Sega Retro, and SEGAbits staff are not eligible to participate.
  • Two winners will be randomly selected from all entries that have the correct answers for the 4 main trivia questions. If no one got all four correct, then two will be selected for 3 out of 4, etc. If no one got any answers right, then you all suck and the contest will start over with new questions.
  • Winners will be announced within two days after the contest closes, and they will be contacted with regards to what game they would like to receive.
  • Prizes will be new games delivered to the winners using Amazon.

PLEASE NOTE: Due to some issues with the Sonic Lost World contest, I will be disqualifying anyone who:

  • Attempts to submit multiple entries in order to skew the odds in their favor. (This is only for users who maliciously send tons of entries; accidentally sending one or two duplicate emails will not be a problem.)
  • Complains about the choice of platform(s) and/or game(s) for this giveaway.

THE TRIVIA QUESTIONS:
If you want to win GerbilSoft’s Sonic Games, you just have to answer these four trivia questions. (The fifth one is a bonus question that won’t count for anything but bragging rights.) Send your answers to [email protected], with subject: “Sonic Retro’s Sonic Boom Giveaway”. (Confirmation emails won’t be sent; if you want a confirmation, enable the “Return Receipt” flag in your email client.) Entries must be received by 2014/11/06 11:59 PM EST (2014/11/07 04:59 AM UTC).

  • When Sonic Adventure 2 was ported to GameCube, one of the options on the main menu was removed. Which option was this?
  • What two Game Gear Sonic games were not released on cartridge outside of Japan?
  • What assembly language do you need to know to hack the Sonic Advance series?
  • Shadow the Hedgehog (the game) has branching story paths. What is the total number of possible paths throughout the storyline?

Optional bonus question for bragging rights:

  • What C++ library used in recent Sonic games has the same name as one of Sonic’s signature moves?
Community

SEGA’s Sonic Boom 2014: Lost in New York


SEGA’s Sonic Boom event took place this past Saturday in New York, and I was able to attend, representing both Sonic Retro and SEGAbits. The whole night was a lot of fun, and it was great to meet so many people responsible for one of my favorite SEGA franchises. Stephen Frost did an excellent job hosting the show. All the guests were friendly and willing to go above and beyond for fans, most notably Ted Poley and Mike Pollock who were able to stick around and sign additional autographs outside their sessions. If you’re interested in reading how the night unfolded, make sure to check out my impressions over at SEGAbits.
What made this year’s Sonic Boom unique from previous years was the focus on SEGA West’s Sonic Boom franchise. Outside of the live music, which featured tracks from Sonic Adventure through to Sonic Lost World, and Iizuka being present, the night was mostly about Sonic Boom. All the bases were covered, with Archie Sonic artist Tracy Yardley manning a busy table featuring a convention exclusive Sonic Boom poster for sale, and guests from TOMY, Sanzaru Games Inc., BigRedButton Entertainment, and the full voice cast doing interviews and signing autographs. Fans expecting a peek at what Sonic Team are up to were out of luck, but for those who wanted to learn more about SEGA’s new branch in the Sonic franchise, the night did not disappoint. I can easily say that I am far more excited for the 3DS version and the cartoon show now, though the Wii U version and the comic book are still a gray area. Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric looks far better in person, however I’m not sure how well the game will be paced, and the camera in the speed sections needs work. The comic book is sure to have great art, but I’m not sure how the stories will play out. Still, following the event I am more sold on Sonic Boom now than I was before.
Being the only Sonic Retro writer in attendance this year, I’ll admit to feeling a bit like a lone wolf for the first half of the night. Thankfully, I came across several Sonic and SEGA fan site and YouTube channel owners which included SEGA Driven‘s SonicYoda, The Sonic Stadium‘s T-Bird, Tails’ Channel’s Matt, SomeCallMeJohnny, and the Find The Computer Room team. It was great to meet these guys in person, and I was glad to find such a large pocket of people at Sonic Boom who liked seeing Shadow getting kicked in the face, thought mid-20s hipster Chris Thorndyke is the greatest idea for a cosplay, and believed Big the Cat deserved his own game (okay, maybe I’m the only one who believes that last one).
After the break, check out a gallery of photos from the night, and there’s also those additional impressions I mentioned *cough cough*.
Continue Reading

Game News

Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal Demo Coming to the eShop on November 4th


According to Nintendo World Report, a demo of Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal will be released on the eShop on November 4th. It isn’t known if or when a demo of its Wii U counterpart Rise of Lyric will also be released or if this is the same demo that was playable at events like Sonic Boom or PAX.
The site also recorded a playthrough of the Sonic Boom demo with direct feed audio, so you can also listen to what the game’s music is like. They recorded some gameplay of the Rise of Lyric demo as well, which can be seen after the jump. Continue Reading

Game News

New Trailer for Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric and Shattered Crystal Shows Shadow and Metal Sonic

As you could expect from the Sonic Boom event, a new trailer for the TV show isn’t the only new Sonic thing that got revealed today. SEGA also showed a new trailer showing gameplay and cutscenes from both upcoming Sonic Boom games: Rise of Lyric for Wii U and Shattered Crystal for 3DS.
The most notable thing this trailer shows is more of Shadow and Metal Sonic, who appear in both games as either bosses or rivals to race against. Also it has overly dramatic music and an ancient evil because why not.