A quick little heads-up to you guys, the Mario & Sonic sprint contest will be ending on April 1st.  Unfortunately due to the demands of my many SEGA masters I’ve not been able to update the tables but I’m going to do so tomorrow if I possibly can.  Keep those coming in - the draw for the Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity SEGA Pass newsletter contest will also be made then.

Does anyone remember SEGA Splash! Golf?

No?

Well you might at any rate, a trailer came out for it some time ago.  The premise is that you have a variety of humans playing golf and you live out their lives in a cel-shaded environment with Sonic, Tails and even NiGHTS available to be your caddies - the caddies having the ability to give you special shots.  It looked really nice.

Well I’ve been asking questions as I wondered where the heck it went, apparently the game is out now in the East on PC, however it is only for the “Asian Markets” and will not be appearing over in the West.

Boo hiss.

So if you want this game to come out over here, all I can say is start making noise.

Got some great stuff coming up for you this week - the Chronicles poll for instance?

It’s great to know even those involved knew so little about Brawl, I was speaking to Richard Jacques on some things not necessarily relating to The Club Q&A (a coming soon to the main blogs, FYI) and he just found out Super Sonic Racing was included in the game - no one had told him!

Those deal-breakers and their ways - shine on you crazy diamonds!

Whilst you’ve likely seen it around YouTube etc, the Smash Bros. Dojo today confirmed that Green Hill Zone appears as a stage within Smash Bros. Brawl.  There are also three cameo appearances within the level which adds to Shadow’s appearance as an assist trophy.

Tails, Knuckles and… Silver(???) are running around in the background with Tails in the lead of the three. Even though they are background cameos the Dojo kindly proved they had been lovingly recreated. Of course this means I’ll have to update the Sonic City profiles again. Blast.

Prower > McCloud. (So there.)

That fountain of knowledge Wikipedia is claiming that Shadow appears as an Assist Trophy in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.  This has not been shown by the Dojo yet, however with the game already shipped in Japan the information has appeared online and could well be valid.

With Sonic appearing in the game it shouldn’t be too big a surprise, though I’m still hoping for a King Dedede reskin as Amy as that makes the most sense to me.  Hammers unite, etc. Hey, I’m still upset they’ve not seen fit to add Krystal into the game - staff fighter, female, a new Star Fox character to replace Falco? Ticks all the boxes. Bah, I’m rambling.

Apparently Shadow uses Chaos Control to slow down opponants, presumably before going off somewhere to blow things up like the bad ass he is.

If anyone has proof of any of this let us know.

A little random maths title for you there…

While we wait patiently for a new studio album from them (hint hint Jun) Crush 40 fans can keep up to date with the activities of Mr Senoue and Mr Gioeli on their new official mySpace page.

http://www.myspace.com/crush40official

See it says “official” in the url. Fancy that.

Of course we’ve just had a new track off of Crush 40 on the True Blue album which was sitting on my desk this morning (along with the NiGHTS: JoD triple soundtrack).  When I gain the use of a time machine to access a greater than 24 hour day I shall review the album track by track on Sonic City.

All owners of Sonic plushies should be on the look out as a notorious thief of Rouge proportions (no, not those proportions) has been sneaking around our offices trying his best to steal my Shadow plushie.

This individual has been heard as saying that he does not possess such a styled plush in his collection and has on several occasions tried to sneak it back to his hideous lair. We assume his lair is indeed hideous, however photographic evidence cannot be provided at this time.

There he is….

He goes by the name of “Miles Jacobson”, apparently getting him to say his name backwards banishes him to another dimension but we haven’t tried this yet.

You may know him as the Managing Director of Sports Interactive - which surely you’d've thought means he can afford a plushie of his own.

All Sonic fans should beware this man - look at him, he’s obviously eyeing up your collection right now!

 Lock up your merchandise - he walks amongst you….

The full listing of new Sonic CD “True Blue” has been announced, the title is at this moment scheduled for release on January 29th in Japan only but I know a minor issue like that won’t stop a lot of you so here is the track listing:

01. LIVE & LEARN (From Sonic Adventure 2)
02. IT DOESN’T MATTER (Sonic Adventure 2 Version)
03. ESCAPE FROM THE CITY (From Sonic Adventure 2)
04. HIS WORLD (From Sonic The Hedgehog)
05. SUPER SONIC RACING (From Sonic R)
06. SONIC - YOU CAN DO ANYTHING (From Sonic CD)
07. SONIC BOOM (From Sonic CD)
08. SONIC SPEED RIDERS (From Sonic Riders)
09. RACE TO WIN (From Sonic Rivals 2)
10 SONIC X THEME
11. RIGHT THERE and RIDE ON (From Sonic Rush)
12. SONIC HEROES (From… er, yes…)
13 WHAT I’M MADE OF… (From Sonic Heroes)
14. SEVEN RINGS IN HAND (From Sonic & The Secret Rings)
15. HIS WORLD (Zebrahead Version)
16 IT DOESN’T MATTER (Sonic Adventure Version)
17. OPEN YOUR HEART (From Sonic Adventure)

It also features four bonus tracks in the form of -

18 A NEW VENTURE (Surfin’ S.R.A. Remix)
19. ANGEL ISLAND ZONE (SSBB Remix)
20. SEVEN RINGS IN HAND (Crush 40 Version)
21 OPEN YOUR HEART (Crush 40 vs. Bentley Jones Remix)

Personally, those last four tracks are a pretty exciting prospect - to those of you wondering who in the blue blur Bentley Jones is, he is of course the artist formally known as Lee Brotherton.  Well, I’ve had a word and he’ll hopefully be popping up in a couple of weeks (if not sooner) on Sonic City to talk about what he’s currently up to, the new remix and other things. Stay tuned.

The only thing I’m disappointed by is the lack of the Gunnar Nelson and the Team Chaotix theme from Sonic Heroes. It’s a disgrace! Sing along now: “TEAM CHA-O-TIX they’re detectives, you want on your siiiide…”

Yeah.

Now it’s not everyday Jetix emails you, alas there are no plans at this moment for a series of AAUK based toys - though I’m sure Angelus would look very fetching in chrome space armour…

Apparently there is a new Sonic X store you can go to for all your Sonic X merchandise needs; be they plushies, action figures or even umbrellas.

You can check it out at: http://www.sonicxstore.com

Hey everybody, welcome back to the Blognik here in 2008, but what an end to 2007 we had: Mario & Sonic At The Olympic Games destroyed all comers in the All Format chart and rode high at number one for a fortnight – amazing when you consider it was only available on the Wii. It sold more in a week than any other Wii game and would have captured the Christmas No.1 too but we simply ran out of copies!

I’ll be bringing you details soon of a little M&S internal competition we’re going to be having at SEGAAUK HQ in the near future, as well as something you can get involved in. More on this soon.

Sonic & The Secret Rings also dominated the Wii charts back in March snagging number one spot, whilst Sonic Rush Adventure got a whopping 92% from Official Nintendo Magazine and even snared a rare 10/10 from top fansite Sonic Stadium. PSP owners weren’t out of Sonic action either with Sonic Rivals 2 which is steadfastly refusing to budge despite massive pressure from the PSP Top 5.

Of course in 2008 we’ve so much to look forward to as well from Sonic: Mario & Sonic return this time to the DS on February 8th with new DS exclusive events such as Boxing and Dream Shoot (Coconuts makes a cameo ^_^) I’ll be telling you all about that soon enough no doubt.

Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity is coming your way and is currently slated for release on February 22nd for both PS2 and Nintendo Wii. I for one am really looking forward to this particular title – again expect information on this SRZG to come thick and fast in the run up to launch.

SEGA Superstars Tennis of course is another game featuring Sonic – expect blogs on the subject to move over to the main SEGA blog in the future incidentally. That’s currently down for March 28th and features Sonic, Amy and Dr.Eggman as well as other SEGA favourites such as Samba, Ulala and NiGHTS.

Speaking of our favourite androgynous jester his first game in 11 years finally hits European shores on January 18th in the UK and 25th everywhere else – conquer your nightmares once again, this time on Nintendo Wii.

Then of course there’s Sonic RPG – Bioware’s offering for the DS which we’ll find out more in time no doubt, including its confirmed title. I’m sure we’ll be hearing lots about that title in the near future.

And that’s all to come, of course there’s one more appearance Sonic is making this year: the Smash Bros. Brawl Dojo decided it was about time they gave us some more Sonic details but waited until Christmas Day to do it; firstly they confirmed a Jun Senoue remixed version of Angel Island from (like you need telling) Sonic 3, will feature as one of the tracks on the music player.

We also got more details about Sonic’s Super Smash move where our spiky mascot goes Super in order to dish out some S-Ranked punishment. The screenshots show a much clearer Sonic than the clip seen previously in the Brawl introductory video and from a personal, if somewhat nerdy point of view they have thankfully gotten rid of the “8 zillion emeralds” transformation and now just the seven emeralds in their recognised colours appear.

Here’s to accuracy!

That remixed track of Angel Island from Brawl by the way is apparently going to appear on new Sonic music collection CD “True Blue” which covers 15 years worth of Sonic music. It’s also rumoured to possibly contain the Remix Factory/Lee Brotherton remix of Open Your Heart which has been conspicuously absent since its announcement in 2006.

Now it being the season of giving, I was of course delighted to find that SEGAAUK HQ was bombarded with a series of gifts for me from terrifyingly obsessed community members and friends of the Blognik.

T-Bird was very generous in his presentation of not only the QI annual - presumably he’s hoping the next series (F) will feature Fang (Nack). I received a package from Australia from Sonic well known Sonic fan artist Elson “Darkspeeds” Wong who sent me a copy of his comic.

Yes, you read that right, he’s gotten a comic published - “The Grand ASHWORTH Fortune” which even managed to impress my mum, which is rather like Superman praising the healing powers of Kryptonite. So, if anthropomorphic animals are your thing feel free to check out http://ashworth.darkspeeds.com/ as I’ll certainly be investing in the further ASHWORTH adventures. Lastly in a true example of shameless plugging Discoponies sent me a t-shirt emblazoned with the new Sonic Show logo plus TWO BAGS badges that presumably he wants me to distribute to high-ups in a sneaky way.

Sneak. Sneak. Sneak.
He also sent me a card with a very rude message in it. So nuts to that.

Thank you to all of you who sent in goodwill messages and such during the holidays as well as those of you who sent in cards and other items. We were pleased you enjoyed our little exclusive for Christmas, I’d best get on with trying to get you more stuff!