Sonic Mania is now older than a month. What was once a pipedream of a brand new Sonic developed by fans has finally happened. David The Lurker, Cinossu, Overlord, Bartman3010 and InstantSonic lend their voices to talk about the Mania and not-so Mania about Sonic’s return to 2D glory before the start of this year’s Sonic Amateur Games Expo and the Sonic Hacking Contest. Music composed by Tee Lopes. Expect spoilers in this one!
Browsing Tag
stealth
We played Sonic Mania, and now we’re going to tell you what we think! In this SEGA News Bits, George and I (Barry) rest our aching feet just hours after the Sonic the Hedgehog 25th Anniversary Party in San Diego to share our reaction to the Sonic Mania reveal and give our thoughts on how the game plays. Do we have another Sonic 4 on our hands or is Sonic Mania the true successor to Sonic 3 & Knuckles? The answers are obviously “nope!” and “hell yes!” in that order.
Special thanks to Neo Hazard for letting us use his footage, you can check out his channel here! Also, thanks to Bartman for being the one to play the game in our footage. You can find Bartman’s YouTube channel here!
SEGA News Bits is a production of SEGAbits, covering all things SEGA and Sonic the Hedgehog. When we touch on Sonic stories, you’ll be seeing them here on Sonic Retro as well. If you enjoyed this episode of the SEGA News Bits, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel and never miss an episode!
Interview, Podcasts
SEGAbits Swingin’ Report Show: Interview with Stealth, co-developer of Sonic the Hedgehog 1&2 Remastered
On this week’s SEGAbits Swingin’ Report Show podcast, we’re joined by Stealth, who worked on the official recent remasterings of Sonic The Hedgehog CD, Sonic The Hedgehog, and Sonic The Hedgehog 2 alongside fellow developer The Taxman.
Stealth talks to us about how the remasters began development, the process of remaking classic Sonic titles, the much talked about the remastered Sonic The Hedgehog 3 proof of concept, and what fans can do to try and make Sonic 3 remastered a reality. Also featured is discussion of Sonic The Hedgehog 4 and the recent decisions SEGA has made with the franchise. If you love classic Sonic games and behind-the-scenes stories of game development, this is the show for you!
Also, Barry and George discuss the recently revealed ToeJam & Earl: Back in the Groove Kickstarter by Greg Johnson (who will be joining us next week) and Sonic Team’s mobile release Sonic Runners, which soft launched yesterday.
Support the Sonic 3 Remastered campaign: http://sonic3remastered.com/
[Download] [RSS] [iTunes] [Archive]
[The following is a guest post about the Sonic 3 Remastered campaign written by Stealth, who with Taxman made the Retro Engine versions of Sonic 1 and 2 which can currently be bought for iOS and Android. They had also made a proof-of-concept of Sonic 3 running in the engine on the iPhone. This was originally posted on Stealth’s own blog, so it’s written in a way you can expect from a post on a personal blog.]
Intro
Before I start, I’ll first say that I’m speaking as an individual, and not on behalf of any other party, team, business entity, etc. As such, I will speak only for and of myself, without regard to other parties who may want to remain uninvolved.
With the exception of the anniversary presentation from October, I’ve remained relatively silent on the subject of remastering Sonic the Hedgehog 3. Naturally, this is expected of me as someone who has already contracted with SEGA, would be a part of the Sonic 3 remastering project, and would potentially perform work under contract for SEGA again in the future, however, I no longer feel that it’s appropriate to maintain near-complete silence in contrast to my own personal feelings as an individual and as a fan of classic Sonic the Hedgehog.
Fans and Bringing Back Sonic 3
I’m writing this to openly demonstrate my support for the #BringBackSonic3 / #Sonic3Remastered initiative. The initiative has been in its infancy since shortly after the October presentation, but appears to finally be gaining traction. If you haven’t yet heard of it, check out the site for some additional info:
www.sonic3remastered.com
In short, this is a combined letter-writing and petition campaign to attempt to convince SEGA to contract and fund the completion and release of the existing Sonic 3 (& Knuckles) prototype discussed and displayed in the aforementioned presentation.
To be honest, I personally have no idea how effective either portion of this campaign will ultimately be regardless of the level of support it receives, but it seems as if they may be our last available recourse. If you expect there to be any chance of this project being realized, I’d suggest that you participate in both the letter-writing and petition campaigns and ask as many people as you can gather to do the same.
Stealth, one half of the brains behind the recent mobile remasters of Sonic 1 and Sonic 2, announced he’s looking to train people into using his own Head Cannon Game Engine (HCGE.) Before you go running in hoping to recreate Sonic 3 or some other title, Stealth has the strict requirement that, regardless of skill level, applicants must dedicate themselves to this project and not just flake out when the going gets tough.
Early on, Stealth will work alongside approved applicants and teach how to run with the engine. As time goes on, Stealth will roll back and allow autonomy to take over. Project HC is focused as being a Sonic game (which most around here should be familiar with) in the same general area as Sonic Megamix, at least to get the ball rolling.
Currently, applications are open to all positions like programmers, musicians, artists, etc. For more information on the project and how to formally submit an application, hit up this lovely link.
Are you up to it?
Fan Works, Game News
Taxman and Stealth celebrate Sonic & Knuckles’ 20th anniversary with a Sonic 3 & Knuckles proof of concept
Today marks the 20th anniversary of SEGA’s Sonic & Knuckles, and to celebrate, Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 remastered developer Christian Whitehead shared a proof of concept prototype from the Taxman & Stealth personal vaults featuring Sonic 3 & Knuckles running on the Retro Engine. Of course, this is presented unofficially, so don’t jump to the conclusion that a Sonic 3 & Knuckles remastered is on the way anytime soon. Still, awesome to see that they’ve done work on the much requested title, even in an unofficial capacity. The Taxman himself shared this link in our forums, stating that “this isn’t an official announcement of any Sega project, nor to we intend to work on this as a fan-project. It’s simply a proof of concept from our vaults that has been kept to our chests for some time.”
You can learn more about the technical side of the project in Stealth’s latest blog post!
If you’ve been looking up what the hell is up with Sonic Megamix, you might have noticed that there’s a leaked “5.0” build out there. Because of it getting more popular, Stealth and the team have decided to just put it out there themselves. They don’t recommend anyone to actually play it though, because this build is unfinished, buggy and very outdated. You can find Stealth’s complete post about this after the jump along with a download link to build “5.0a”. Just be sure to read his post before you consider downloading it.
If you want a glimpse of the current build, Stealth also released a new video of it which can be seen above.
Because the folks at Amazon are such swell guys, thirty of the most popular apps on the Amazon App Store are free for the next two days. And it turns out that Sonic 2 is a pretty popular game even to this day, because it’s one of those thirty apps. If you’ve wanted to give The Taxman and Stealth‘s remastering of the game a try, this is the best time to do so. You can get it here:
Amazon US
Amazon UK
Amazon’s set top box pulled a SEGA Saturn by releasing at the same time as it’s announcement, not only acting as a direct competitor to other multimedia devices such as the Apple TV and the Roku, but also acting as a dedicated game console as well, sporting it’s Android based operating system sporting games like Minecraft – Pocket Edition, Telltale’s The Walking Dead and more. With an Android based system comes SEGA with a number of conversions of their Android based Sonic games. Check out after the break below to see the list of games from SEGA that became available at the launch of the system as well as their price and more on these ports.
Have you ever wanted to watch some schmucks play a brand new game from 20 years ago? That’s exactly what we’re doing right now, so join us as we play the newly updated release of Sonic 2 right now!
Despite some issues, the stream is now being hosted on the Vidya Retro Youtube channel split into four parts. You can watch the normal playthrough of the game in two parts, the debug playthrough or take a look at the two player mode in action.
[Part 1] [Part 2] [Debug Mode] [2 Player Mode]