On a cold morning last Tuesday a bunch of people dressed up as game characters to set a world record and guess what? SEGA turned up as well as an official partner for the event!

Yes, I braved the elements (and a restless nights “sleep”) with my guests from the NiGHTS fanbase TRiPPY and DiGi Vallentine who I’d had flown down from EDiNBURGH, er, sorry Edinburgh to participate in the event.  As the first ones there we sort of held the fort for the organisers and others gathered around the NiGHTS shaped becon of cosplay.  Amongst the first people around were a Gordon Freeman, a Saria and a Lloyd Irving who was moderately astonished I knew who he was but then I am the big Symphonia fan. Incidentally OXM, he’s the one you don’t recognise on your photos.

TRiPPY was bedecked in her truly stunning NiGHTS outfit, which garnered a lot of attention whilst DiGi was donning the blue suit and tights- much to his dismay - of Sonic.  Actually DiGi was a very good Sonic indeed, showing off the full range of Sonic manerisms after a crash course from myself and ample costumed “speak” doable for a man wearing a large suit, big shoes and having zero visibility.

There were many characters there from across the various gaming divides and many stories to tell, some of the Sonic community turned out too.  Blog poster extreme Diogo appeared as Assassin (minus his Creed), whilst Urtheart turned up as Pokemon Trainer Red complaining he’d put too much dye in for his cap and that it was itching like crazy.

Here we can see a rather tall looking Tails who was very popular with the kids, especially the primary school class who had turned out en masse as Super Mario.  If you caught Newsround on that day you’ll have seen one small girl claiming that Tails was her favourite by far, admitedly she said he was from Sonic Underground but we’ll forgive her that slight mistake.

Unfortunately Tails had a tendency to dance around rather strangly - “NO ONE KNOWS WHO I AM!” yelled Vger at the top of his voice.  Actually the danger money award should go to Vger as the interior of the Tails head was unprotected chicken wire and frankly looked like it was going to do damage to him.

I was of course busy with NiGHTS and Sonic making sure they were okay, but then look who turned up: Richard Jacques himself!

We got into a very animated conversation about various things Sonic related including SST which is out today in case you didn’t know, but in his small entourage there was an Ulala with a tennis racquet!  So we had pretty much half the line up for the game as well as the composer and the game!

By the way, myself and Richard agree that if that bastion of all things Jacques, UK:Resistance, miss the FOURTH RJ item in a row from these pages then they fail spectacularly and should be ashamed of their fan abilities. Ashaaaaaammmed!

Eventually all the press dragged our costumed heroes away whilst myself and Richard talked “shop”. Though after a while I also went back to defend our bags because they had been left lying outside the Tate Modern. To the TWIT who left a rather expensive looking Nikkon camera, iPod and dog shaped speaker unattended on a bench you have me to thank for it not being stolen.

In the end the day was a success, the record was set a load of children got to dress as Super Mario and I had to send “the first couple of Nightopia” on their way. It was a great day and you can find the whole range of photos from the day on the SEGA Europe flickr account at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/segaeurope/

With Sonic City down with the flu, I’ve decided to add the next Richard Jacques SST article to the main blog instead.  This time I invited Richard to tell us a bit more about some of the technical aspects of his work on SEGA Superstars Tennis (which is out of course on March 20th).  Over to you Richard:

From the beginning of the project, the producers of SEGA Superstars Tennis were keen to have all the classic music from the various franchises produced in surround sound. This was a superb decision and so I started to make a list of all the classic tracks that would need mixing in surround.

As the latest consoles all support one form of surround or another, coupled with the fact that home theatre systems are now comparatively cheap and widely adopted amongst the gaming community, this was a great move by SEGA to be so forward thinking and accept nothing less than the highest audio quality for the title. So myself, and SEGA producers Warren Leigh and Ben Barker started to get together a list of the tracks that needed mixing in surround. This was already a fairly daunting task since the game involves so many classic franchises, and therefore a lot of the music associated with a particular character or franchise.

When all was said and done we ended up with about 85 music tracks that were going to be mixed for surround sound. This is no tall order, and SST has one of the largest music track lists produced in surround.

The main format we were working on was producing 5.1 Dolby Digital content. This is a widely adopted surround sound format which can be produced on PS3, Xbox 360 as well as being present in many home cinema receivers and amplifiers. It basically means that you have two main front speakers (Left and Right), a centre speaker, two rear surround speakers (Left and Right) and a sub woofer (also known as the LFE channel) for earth shattering bass!

One of the challenges with the music for SST was that we were dealing with material that had been created over a 15 year period, and obviously technology (both gaming and recording studio technology) has changed a lot during that time. Another factor was that there was music from many different composers, recorded and produced in many different studios in Europe, Japan the US and other countries, so we also had to bear that in mind.

So I and my team began to create the surround mixes.

This was a complex process using lots of high end studio equipment and we had to treat each music track in its own right and tweak various settings accordingly. And of course we were under tight time constraints so there was a constant stream of surround mixing, composition and remixing taking place for the duration of the project. I think everyone will agree that the results are stunning, and it was a joy to be able to work with such iconic music (including some of my personal favourites), providing a new fresh surround sound to these classic tracks.

The next two mini games trailers have gone up with zombies and monkies, er, I mean monkeys aplenty.

Super Monkey Ball

Curien Mansion

Well I did say there would be more videos in quick succession as we inch closer to SST’s release and it’s the feature of another mini game.

Not just any mini games either, but footage of action based off of SPACE HARRIER!

Welcome to the Fantasy Zone!

Some new videos for you to look at for SST, nice shiny videos fresh out of the box, the first two up give you an idea of what happens when you go into a match as they are the court introductory sequences for the Samba De Amigo and Sonic The Hedgehog courts of Carnival Park and Green Hill Zone respectively,

This is Green Hill Zone, like you need an introduction!

All together now… SAMBA DE AMIGO!

Now these two are trailers that relate to the mini games, now mini games vary from version to version so I can only confirm these particular ones are of the X360/Ps3 persuasion.  The first off is some four player melee action on the Scrap Brain court and the second is in the shape of some glorious Chu Chu Rocket mini game footage.

Those electric spike balls HURT.

Chu Chu Rocket. Glorious.

That’s all for now… but there are more videos appearing every day this week to my knowledge, we’ll blog these as soon as they come out of embargo.

SEGA Superstars Tennis is heading your way (very soon as it happens) on PS2, Ps3, DS, Wii and X-Box 360. A snazzy new trailer has been released showing various Superstar state moves which you can observe from this Youtube link here - BEHOLD!

Now the main point of this post was that I’ve been able to get permission to grab for you 360 owners the full list of 360 achievements so you know just how to up your Gamerscore point totals. I’ve split them up mainly due to the fact that there are so many - that and there are some that are to do with features not neccesarily revealed yet, as well as ones that are secret. Oooooh.

Play Ball - Win your first Match. (10GP)
Starting Grid - Win with all starting characters in any mode. (10GP)
Beat Them All - In any mode, beat all characters in Singles matches. (30GP)
Original Teams - Beat all the classic Doubles pairs. (30GP)
Cameo Appearance - Hit a SEGA court cameo! (20GP)
To The Max - Hit 3 Max serves in a row. (20GP)
Seeing Stars - Enter Superstar mode 10 times in a match. (20GP)
SEGA Rally - Hit a 40 shot rally in any mode. (20GP)
Top Gun - Hit 100 aces. (20GP)
Afterburner - Hit a serve over 124mph / 200kph (20GP)
OutRun - Run a total of 6.2 miles / 10km (20GP)
Step Into SEGA World - Complete your first Challenge (Rank A) (10GP)
Classic Complete - Complete all Challenges in one SEGA game (Rank A) (20GP)
Challenges 101 - Complete all Challenges in all SEGA games (Rank A) (30GP)

Keep an eye out for the second half coming next month! The trailer can also be seen on our SEGA Europe Community Team Facebook group - check it out.

Hi guys, I’ll soon be furnishing you with the first half of an exclusive overview of the 360 achievements for SEGA Superstars Tennis - so keep them peeled for that!

In the meantime the SST website has gone live, we’ll be updating it with bios and various other things when we get the opportunity.  Check it out here: www.sega.co.uk/sst

You may well have seen already, but last week we launched the first video of SEGA Superstars Tennis. A nice little trailer showing off all of the characters in the game…. more or less

It’s a superb FMV, you can catch it on our YouTube channel or check it out below - you’ll need to open the post to see the video.

This is my first official blog post as a member of the SEGA Community
team, so hello all! I’m really excited to be working for one of the
best gaming companies on the planet. As I’ve been playing their games
for over 20 years, I thought it only right that they should give me a
job. We’ve got some great titles coming out in the next few months, and
I will be giving you the inside info on some of these and much
more.

Anyway, on with the
news.

Not sure if you saw the news
story, but Sumo Digital are currently hard at work
on a new
game for us; SEGA Superstars
Tennis. Due for release in early 2008, SEGA Superstars Tennis is
one of those fun, pick-up-and play games where traditional tennis rules
are thrown out in favour of all-out fun and frolics on the
court.

Currently,
info is a little thin on the ground (a bit like my hair), but what we
do know is:

• More than 15 playable
  characters from SEGA’s army of gaming idols including Sonic, AiAi,
  Ulala, and Amigo.
• Each character will have a unique
  ability.
• Exhibition and Tournament
  modes.
• Different courts in some very familiar
  locations such as Green Hill Zone and Carnival
  Park.
• It’s coming out on loads of formats: PS3,
  Xbox 360, PS2, Wii and DS.
• You can play your online
  buddies with the PS3 and Xbox 360
  versions.
• There’ll be loads of unlockable
  extras.

We’ll bring you more info on
how the game is coming along soon. I’ll see if I can sneak into
Fortress SEGA and nab some exclusive pics and videos for the
blog.

In the
meantime, what SEGA character would you like to see make an appearance?