The voting has begun! The 27th Annual Golden Joystick Awards are here, and SEGA has a strong presence in just about every category out there.

To vote, just click here, pick your entries and submit! I voted earlier today – here’s what my list looked like:

Yeah, I voted for Valkyria in every category I could. (You should too. ) MadWorld and Headstrong games (Who created Overkill) were also easy choices for me.

If everyone votes together, there’s a great chance that a number of SEGA hits could end up winning. Above all though, just vote for the ones you want and make sure to get your votes in, then spread the word  - I’m looking at you, Valkyria Fans!

Finally, here’s the full list of SEGA games or entries:

—
FAMILY GAME OF THE YEAR
Alex Kidd in Miracle World
Beijing Olympics 2008 — The Official Videogame
Iron Man
Samba de Amigo
Sonic and the Black Knight
Sonic The Hedgehog
Sonic Unleashed
The Incredible Hulk
Valkyria Chronicles

HANDHELD GAME OF THE YEAR
Bleach: Dark Souls
Football Manager handheld 2009
Iron Man
Phantasy Star Portable
Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood
The Incredible Hulk

MOBILE GAME OF THE YEAR
Samba de Amigo
Sega Columns Deluxe
The Incredible Hulk

MULTIPLAYER GAME OF THE YEAR
Beijing 2008
Football Manager handheld 2009
Football Manager Live
Madworld
Samba de Amigo
Sega Megadrive Ultimate Collection

NINTENDO GAME OF THE YEAR
Alex Kidd in Miracle World
Bleach: Dark Souls
Earthworm Jim
Ecco Jr
Iron Man
Madworld
Samba de Amigo
Sonic and the Black Knight
Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood
Sonic The Hedgehog
Sonic Unleashed

THE ONE TO WATCH
Aliens vs. Predator
Aliens: Colonial Marines
Bayonetta
Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games
The Conduit
Vancouver 2010: The Official Videogame
Virtua Tennis 2009

ONLINE GAME OF THE YEAR
Empire: Total War
Football Manager 2009
Football Manager Live

PC GAME OF THE YEAR
Empire: Total War
Football Manager 2009
Football Manager Live
Incredible Hulk

PLAYSTATION GAME OF THE YEAR
Beijing 2008
Football Manager Handheld 2009
Golden Axe
Golden Axe: Beast Rider
Incredible Hulk
Iron Man
OutRun Arcade
Phantasy Star Portable
Sega Megadrive Ultimate Collection
Sega Superstars Tennis
Sonic Unleashed
The Incredible Hulk
Valkyria Chronicles
Yakuza 2

PUBLISHER OF THE YEAR
Sega

SOUNDTRACK OF THE YEAR
Empire: Total War
Madworld
Samba de Amigo
SEGA Megadrive Ultimate Collection
Sonic Unleashed
Valkyria Chronicles

ULTIMATE GAME OF THE YEAR
Alex Kidd in Miracle World
Alpha Protocol
Beijing 2008
Earthworm Jim
Ecco Jr
Empire: Total War
Football Manager 2009
Football Manager Handheld 2009
Football Manager Live
Golden Axe: Beast Rider
Iron Man
Madworld
OutRun Arcade
Sega Megadrive Ultimate Collection
Sega Superstars Tennis
Sonic and the Black Knight
Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood
Sonic The Hedgehog
Sonic Unleashed
Space Siege
The Incredible Hulk
Valkyria Chronicles
Yakuza 2

XBOX GAME OF THE YEAR
Alpha Protocol
Beijing 2008
Golden Axe: Beast Rider
Incredible Hulk
Iron Man
Sega Megadrive Ultimate Collection

This weekend is the yearly Cherry Blossom Festival here in San Francisco! The festival, which takes place in Japantown, is a great chance to immerse yourself in some modern and traditional Japanese culture, get some tasty authentic Japanese food, and take a look at all sorts of Japanese things – and SEGA video games from Japan are no exception!

Play unreleased SEGA Games!

We’re going to have a lot of playable demos at the show, including:

• Let’s Tap – EXCLUSIVE
• Sonic and the Black Knight
• Samba De Amigo
• Sonic Unleashed
• Bleach: Third Phantom – EXCLUSIVE
• Phantasy Star Portable

Especially notable on that list are Let’s Tap! and Bleach: Third Phantom, which I highlighted (for good reason) in bright cherry blossom pink. Both of these games have never been demonstrated to the public in the US before – so if you’re in the area, you have a chance to be one of the first in the country to check out these games in English!

Meet the SEGA Community Team!

Kellie, Clumsyorchid, and RubyEclipse from the SEGA Community team are also going to be there, so feel free to drop by and say hello to us! Kellie and Clumsy will be there early Saturday afternoon, and Ruby will be dropping by Sunday afternoon. Also feel free to work on your conversational Japanese with Clumsy, as he’s been learning recently. (We’re sure he’ll appreciate the extra practice!)

Compete in a special Community contest!

Drop by our booth on Sunday, April 11th, at 3 PM for the first-ever Cherry Blossom SEGA Trivia Contest! Ruby is going to be bringing along some special merchandise to give out to the hardcore fans who score the most points in this contest of both old and new SEGA knowledge and speed – be the first to shout out the right answer to the question he asks, and you’ll score a point. Get the most points and you’re going home with something to show for it!

Get free SEGA stuff!

And there was much rejoicing. We’re going to be giving out free goodies all weekend to people who visit the booth! Drop by and ask what kind of stuff we have left, and we may be able to get you hooked up with some SEGA merch that’s normally exclusive to press or employees internally!

Of course, there are tons of other things to check out at the festival too, which you can find listed here. If you’re in the area, we hope you’ll join us this weekend for a fantastic mix of Japanese and SEGA fun!

Update: The SEGA Booth will be located in the Imperial Ballroom B, and will be open from 11-5 both days!

Thanks to ArchangelUK for coordinating this and posting it on the Sonic Blognik.

I’m sure a lot of you are aware that over in Japan on the Sonic World Adventure website my colleagues at SOJ are discussing all sorts of things to do with the creation of the game on some developers blogs.  Sadly these are in Japanese and my knowledge of Japanese currently consists of “konichiwa”, “bakayaru”, “kawaii” and “miso” – in fact they’ve been rather drowning with them presently but thats okay because we got an offer a while back from the director of the game himself Tetsu Katano of Sonic Team who asked if he could do a blog for us as he’d like to talk to you guys!

Naturally I said yes – you really thought I’d say no? Come on! Anyway I laid out a couple of points people had been talking about (including Blaze’s theme) and invited Katano-san to say a few words. Which he has, please bare in mind as usual that this has gone via the translator and as such isn’t wholy “fluid” English but I’ve straightened out a few points for you.

SONIC TEAM PRODUCER – TETSU KATANO

About Me

I entered SEGA in 1993, and have been a long time SEGA user since SEGA MK3. My first title that I worked on in Sonic Team was NiGHTS, where I was making the A-Life system. I also worked on the Sonic 3D Blast special stage and Sonic JAM before I served as main programmer/ player programmer on Sonic Adventure.

Katano-san at the recent Japan event in London,
getting in some practice on SBK.

After I moved to Sonic Team USA, the list goes on to Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic Adventure 2 Battle and Sonic Heroes, where I continued to work as main programmer and player programmer. The first project I worked on when I came back to Japan was Sonic and the Secret Rings on which I was technical programmer.  So me and Sonic have been working together for more than 10 years… Though if truth be told, I didn’t like the look of the Mega Drive Sonic himself, because I thought he looked mean! Lol.

But gradually I’ve come to adore this lovely character who’s a little bit cheeky but very expressive. If Naka-san is Sonic’s father and Ohshima-san’s his mother, I humbly regard myself as one of his older brothers.

(AAUK’s note:  No this does not mean Katano-san is Manic from Sonic Underground and yes lol was indeed put.)

Sonic & The Black Knight

This time I was Producer slash Director. It was around this time when we finally started to see the end of “Sonic and the Secret Rings” after a sequence of sleepless nights that my boss came up to me and casually dropped on me the newss that it would be up to me to think of an idea for “the next one (in the Storybook series)“.

After much struggle that gave me both pain and joy, I finally decided to throw Sonic into a world of sword and magic. I confess that I’ve always wanted to see Sonic holding a sword. I also wanted to see Knuckles or Shadow, the usual suspects, back as strong foes, not just as side characters. This is how the plot of “Sonic and the Black Knight” came into a shape.

Perhaps most challenging was to make Sonic have a sword. I had to hold on to the Sonicness. If he loses that as a result of having sword, then it would be preposterous. I sought advice from many people about this. My favourite bit would be when everyone in Sonic Team started to see the great game that this was becoming. I am proud of this game and I will be most happy if users will enjoy this game too.

Not to mention Sonic’s sword, actually this game has a big shift in its main attitude. Normally Sonic is about collecting rings and speed dash to the goal. But this time these are not the only objectives in the game. Of course it’s exhilarating if you can reach the goal fast, but in this game, every other cool action is taken into account in the scoring.

Blaze’s Music…

That was a frequent topic of discussions with my sound director (Jun Senoue),  for this game, and for her we prepared a special tune and since she’s a flame master, it has to be a burning hot tune… Actually, with one of the accessories the user can change the music that plays during game. You will hear familiar songs that some of you might be already talking about.

I love Sonic as a series very much. I gave everything I had to make the cool Sonic that we love. And so did my team. I’m sure you will like this game too!

We’d like to thank Katano-san for taking the time out of his bust schedule to write for us.

Ok, so we’re a bit behind in content for the 5 days of Fanart.  Let this be a lesson to you 5 dayers out there, it can be tough to get it all together.  No matter, with Friday coming directing after Thursday, I thought it would be a good opportunity to roll them together.  What?  You say they always do that… hush…

Anyhow, please do enjoy this great selection from Thursday and Friday.  These pieces will round out our coverage of the fanart for Sonic and the Black Knight Fanart Contest.  If you are interested in seeing the winning submissions, you’ll have to grab the full game on March 3rd!

And lastly, highlighting fanart is something we’ve fallen behind on with Sonic Central.  We recognize this and wholeheartedly apologize to the fans who have submitted art in hopes of seeing it appear on the site.  The good news is that we’ll be moving to support artists across the blogs until another solution can be found on Sonic Central.  More about this will be posted next week when we finalize our plans, so if you have art that you want to have featured, save it up and we’ll show you how to get it in next week!

If you made it this far, you are a true Sonic fan! Thanks to everyone who submitted amazing art for this contest. Have a good weekend!

Following our 5 days of Fanart, we have another batch of Sonic art from the Sonic and the Black Knight fanart contest.  I don’t have too much to add for Wednesday, however today does bring one of my favorite pieces that I wished was selected- see if you can guess which it is. Remember, if you like the art, head to our Flickr page and comment on it!

What?  You say it’s not Wednesday, well, … it must be Wednesday somewhere in the world…

What? You say it doesn’t work that way, well… then hush – we can pretend!

Enjoy today’s fanart, look for another update later today for Thursday art.  If  you’ve missed the past few days, you can view them here:

Monday Art

Tuesday Art

Earlier this week, our colleague ArchangelUK posted the first part of an interview with Tommy Tallarico on the Sonic Blognik. Here’s part of the interview, and you can read the rest on the Sonic Blognik. We’ll also post some of part 2 when it’s ready.

Tommy Tallarico is a busy man, you only need to see his email signature to get a bit of an idea as to how busy. Host/writer/co-producer, The Electric Playground & Reviews on the Run television shows. Founder, CEO and Chairman of Game Audio Network Guild [G.A.N.G.]. Executive Producer and CEO of the legendary Video Games Live show – oh, and he’s also the President of Tommy Tallarico Studios, Inc. let’s not forget that.

He’s also an absolute pleasure to talk to incidentally.

Last month we asked you to provide us with some questions to pass on to Tommy, a long time Sonic fan, who was invited to produce some music for Sonic & The Black Knight. You sent the questions in your droves, asking this composing superstar everything from the technical to the personal and then there were the others… is Tails playable in the multiplayer of SBK and would Sonic ever marry Amy. Riiight…. Anyway after making some choices and sending Tommy a slew of them he’s come back with some very full answers to your questions, so big in fact that I’m having to split these up.

So let’s start shall we?

ArchangelUK: First up a question that was discussed on the forums a fair bit actually…

Alex Tomalty: How did you become a Sonic fan and what Sonic games to you own?

Tommy Tallarico: I’ve been a Sonic fan from the very beginning. The Genesis/Mega Drive was always one of my favoite platforms… both to play games on and to write music for. The first time that drew me to Sonic was the amazing music. Hearing Green Hill Zone for the first time just blew me away. It’s one of those songs that you just instantly like the first time you hear it. I was also drawn in by the amazing speed of the character. I remember just being in awe that a character, level and graphics could move that fast. What were they calling it at the time?? Blast processing or something? Whatever it was… it was damn cool.

I had the privilege to work on a lot of really fun games for the Genesis/Mega Drive back then. Games like Global Gladiators, Cool Spot, Aladdin, Earthworm Jim 1 & 2… and that first Sonic was always our standard for excellence. We all adored and worshiped that game.

That being said, I’d be lying if I said I’ve been happy with where the Sonic games and franchise have gone. Maybe I’m just more of an old school type of guy, but I always thought the 2-D Sonic games had more playability and fun factor than the 3-D stuff. I hope that statement doesn’t offend anyone, it’s all just personal opinion and taste I suppose. But I really have a fond place in my heart for the 2-D Sonic stuff.

Stomp224, Urtheart, Leslie Wai: What made you want to compose for games, and how do you think it differs from composition for other media such as film?

TT: My whole life, my two greatest loves and passions were music & video games. But growing up, I never thought to ever put the two together. Of course, when I was growing up in the late 70’s, early 80’s… there was no such thing as a video game composer! Music had always been around my family – my cousin is Steven Tyler from Aerosmith. His real name is Steven Tallarico, so I always kind of grew up idolizing him and the work that he did. So, I never thought it would be out of my reach to do something similar. My parents were products of the 1950s so I started playing piano when I was three years old, to Great Balls of Fire (Jerry Lee Lewis), Elvis Presley and stuff like that – but I always played by ear. It wasn’t until the late 70s, when I started to hear these amazing film scores from things like Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Rocky that I felt like I wanted to be a composer. That’s when I started getting into classical music – my favourite being Beethoven – and that’s how I learned to write scores for symphonies and orchestras, by listening to the masters such as John Williams and Beethoven.

When I turned 21, I left my parents to go out to California. I was looking for a career in the music industry. I didn’t know anyone, I didn’t have a job, no place to stay, no money, no friends, nothing. I just drove out there, showed up in Hollywood, and—let’s just say it doesn’t look like it looks like on television. The only other thing I knew was Disneyland, so I stopped a homeless person on the street, asked him where Mickey Mouse lived, figuring that must be a pretty cool place to be, and he pointed me down to Orange County. So I drove into Orange County and I picked up a newspaper and saw a job at Guitar Center. I was homeless. I was actually sleeping under a pier at Huntington Beach for the first three weeks I was out in California. But the first day I picked up a newspaper, saw the job, went down there the next day, and they said, “You’re hired, you start tomorrow.”

The first day I showed up for work, I was wearing a video game t-shirt and one of the first people who walked in the store that day was a producer from Virgin. They were starting a video game company right down the street, and he saw my shirt and he was like, “Whoa, you’re into video games?” I’m like, “Yeah, are you kidding me?”—I started reeling off everything I knew. And he says, “Do you want a job? You start tomorrow.” I was hired as a games tester, and I would literally bug the vice president of the company every day, saying, “Whenever you need music, just let me know. I’ll learn how to do it, and do it for free, and if you don’t like it, you don’t have to use it.” So about three or four months later, one of the first games that I was actually a producer and tester on was [the 1992 GameBoy] Prince Of Persia. And I asked him to do the music. They made me the full-time music guy after that.

In regards to how game composing differs from any other media, I think we’re always going to be different from film and television just because of how the medium is presented. Television is a very linear medium for example; you may only get a few seconds where your piece is used in the foreground. The reality is that film and television are by nature… stories, and that story is told through dialogue – because of that music is very much considered as background material to push the dialogue forward. With video games, the action drives the story, concept or main goal, so we get to create music that 80-90% of the time is the big action sequence.

Even great composers like John Williams are restricted in how he creates music, because he still has to sit down with George Lucas who tells him what music to create at which time frame. Because of the linear nature of the medium, the direction will very much be… “At 1:51 the music changes to dark and
moody as Darth Vader just walked into the room, and at 3:42 the music needs to do this because the Death Star blows up”.

In game development, a designer will come to me and say, “Here’s the deal. There are a hundred guys on horseback with swords coming at you, and they’ve all come to kick your butt. Write me a three minute piece of music!”. From there my mind can go wild, as I don’t have the restrictions of a film or TV
composer, and even then the interactivity can send me in different directions. For example, I’ll have this theme for 100 guys kicking my butt, but I may have to do a different interactive branching theme for 10 guys kicking my butt, and another if everyone was gone.

It’s this kind of diverse appeal and approach that we have that I feel that if Beethoven were alive today, he’d be a video game composer.

To read the rest of part 1, head to the Sonic Blognik.

Following our 5 days of fanart for Sonic Black Knight, we have another group of great selections. Another big congratulations for everyone who submitted their art. We have some very talented Sonic fans!

Look for new art to be posted tomorrow!

Sonic and the Black Knight is nearly here and we thought it would be a fun to release some of the Fanart created by fans. This art came from Sonic fans who were tasked with creating their favorite scene from the Sonic series. While the winners have already been selected, we really loved the art and wanted to share it with everyone in the community. Each day we’ll be releasing 25 random selections from the contest submissions.  Take a look and let us know what you think, be sure to click in for each image as most  are much larger than the thumbnail in the blog.

Look for more art tomorrow and for the rest of the week!

Check out our Percival trailer for the upcoming Sonic and the Black Knight game, shipping March 3rd.

Check out our Percival trailer for the upcoming Sonic and the Black Knight game, shipping March 3rd.