Here we are folks a trio of Sonic items -including a BIG surprise - came out of E3 earlier today so here’s the round-up you’ve been waiting for. 

Numero Uno - Sonic Unleashed

Okay so all heck has broken loose on the Unleashed news front with the teaser at the end of last week and now a new trailer for E3 which shows a lot more footage from the game.  In fact it shows new areas such as China, complete with Chinese dragon loop sections and most importantly it shows the first night time action of a certain Werehog.

Yes, Weresonic has been unleashed with the trailer showing interesting snippets of Sonic in battle against hordes of dark creatures (“…steel clouds floating in the air…”) and amassing combos as you solve puzzles and explore the rooftops and alleyways.  Weresonic is also seen to be able to run pretty fast when needed but on all fours and has rather stretchy arms.

The music for Sonic Unleashed has also been unveiled, the track called “Endless Possibility” featuring Jaret Reddick of group Bowling For Soup.

 A load of new screenshots have also been made available highlighting the Werehog play and other normal Sonic stages. 

Numero Dos - Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood

Not much in the way of new details came out for Sonic Chronicles but a new bunch of screenshots are available which show character artwork on the upper screen mid-battle. Super character move perhaps? Hmmmmm….

Numero Tres - ….wait for it….…

 Waaaaaait for it….

…. 

Yes your eyes are not in the wrong way, Sonic is making an appearance as Amigo is going to take a trip down to to Green Hill Zone! Thankfully it is devoid of any angry creatures unlike Chronicles, but does at least have Chao and Sonic there to strut their fun-kay stuff.

You can see the proof of this below:

Play That Monkey Music Maracas-Boy

Will anyone else appear in the game? We’ll have to wait and see - but oh if only there was some sort of video of this Samba wonderment that people could see at some kind of “event” as an exclusive….

The Sonic Chronciles website is now open! You can get a bit of an idea of how the navigation in the game works with this site and there’s some hidden bits as well for you to find.

Its available in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Dutch - go to www.sonic-chronicles.com now!

The next in our series comes from someone from SOE, one Stefan McGarry. - AAUK

My job is to generate some buzz around this game. You’d think it would be a challenge to sustain interest in a license that’s been around for nearly 17 years, especially when the road to review hasn’t always been a smooth one to run on. To be honest, though, the prospect of working on a new Sonic PR campaign has lost none of its appeal, and thankfully the franchise still has countless fans in the press. Still, you never know what’s around the corner, and when we announce any new game, all the press usually have to go on is a developer name and a couple of screenshots to write about, so it’s a waiting game to see what they write. Giving them a call to prepare them just before we announce can sometimes help:

Journalist: “Alright Stef. What’s occurring?”
Stefan: “Hello mate, I’ve got a new game we’re about to announce that I wanted to talk to you about.”
Journalist: “Nice one, what’s that then?
Stefan: “It’s a new Sonic game on DS…”
Journalist: “Great! Is Mario in it?
Stefan: “No, but….”
Journalist: “Ok, is it a new 2D Sonic Rush game?”
Stefan: “…well, no, it’s an RPG…”
Journalist: “Riiiiight. I’ll call you back.”

Next day…

Stefan: “It’s Stefan again. You didn’t call me back yesterday. I didn’t get a chance to mention that Bioware are developing it”.
Journalist: “Ooh! You should have said! Those guys are legends!

Ok, so we got there in the end. Let’s look at the other facts. Sonic appearing on a Nintendo format is certainly no longer a controversial topic. In fact, recent games like Sonic and the Secret Rings and Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games went down well, so this coupled with the fact that Bioware are one of the best RPG developers in the world, should make Sonic Chronicles one to watch.

The more I play it, the more I’ve found that it’s different to any Sonic game that’s gone before. For a start, the artistic design of Sonic Chronicles, with its hand-drawn, comic-book visuals, is quite simply, lush. Next up, the game is controlled solely using the DS stylus. Whilst the speed of the game might not cause your eyeballs to unwind from their sockets, pop out, and roll down your leg like a Sonic Rush would, the speed skill can be upgraded, so you can zip around the map at quite the gallop.

Also, the game allows you to play as any one of several familiar characters from all over the Sonic universe in a party of four. The thing I’m most excited about though, is that a lot of blanks between these characters’ storylines are being filled in by Bioware, essentially making this game a compendium of Sonic history. Oh, and did I mention that the game kicks off in Green Hill Zone? I found that the music also sounds eerily familiar and very reminiscent of the 2D Mega Drive games. Everything feels authentic, down to ring collecting sound effects and the wonderfully scripted dialogue between the characters. Bioware have really done their homework here. As PRs we’re always looking for reasons to get excited about a game, and having seen this in full effect, I can safely say that fans of the series are going to love this.

The combat is turn-based, and you can arm each of your party with a number of attacks and special moves. Each of these are unique to the character and are fun to upgrade. There’s quite a lot of skill involved in pulling off some of the special moves, with Ouendan-style patterns to mimic for increased accuracy. Over time, you’ll be able to either assign experience points to skills and moves for finetuning, or you can auto-assign them, which should bring a level of accessibility to younger players and depth for RPG fans if they want to tinker.

I’ve been lucky enough to have been given access to several early versions of the game to show to press, and with each new update of the game’s code, I’m content to keep going back and replaying each of the early levels to take a look at what’s next, what’s improved and which new characters pop up. When I’m this happy about how a game’s shaping up, I certainly don’t mind being paid to tell the world about it.

Hi everyone, from now up until launch you’ll be finding on this blog every two weeks or so a guest blog from one of the production team behind upcoming DS game Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood.  These will range from people at BioWare, SEGA Europe, America and even maybe Japan from testers to producers and from top to bottom.

The first off is Randall Bishop from our friends at BioWare, I’ll let him take over from here.

5 Reasons Why Working on Sonic Chronicles is Fun

Hello Sonic Fans! My name is Randall Bishop and I am the Assistant Brand Manager for the upcoming Nintendo DS game Sonic Chronicles.  I work for a company called BioWare who is in charge of developing the game.  I am the caretaker of the game when it comes to external communications, advertising plans, and messaging.

In other words, I am the marketing guy from a developer’s perspective.  I also work very closely with the great people at Sega who are publishing the game.  My typical day mostly revolves around writing emails, talking on the phone and attending meetings.  But don’t let that fool you, my job can be pretty exciting!  So I have made a list of the top 5 reasons why working on Sonic Chronicles is fun.  

1. Sonic’s universe is incredibly vast – The sheer amount of detail that has been put into the Sonic universe throughout the years is astounding!  Sega has obviously put in a lot of time and effort in creating this universe and it shows.    You could spend an enormous amount of time familiarizing yourself with all the different stories, characters, and locations from past games and comics. It’s great to get lost in this world and discover how much fiction has been written on it.  I think its quite an achievement for anyone to become an expert on Sonic the Hedgehog!
 
2. The art team here at BioWare is amazing – After our artists, I am luckily the first person to see the artwork produced for Sonic Chronicles; and that artwork is truly amazing! Once I get my hands on a piece of it, I circulate it throughout our marketing department so we can ‘Ooh’ and ‘Ahh’ over it.  Our favorite type of artwork to look at is the world maps.  The world maps are masterfully hand drawn and have an incredible amount of detail.  We put these maps up on my 24 inch monitor and with our fingers trace out the path we want to take through the level and point out all the places we want to explore. 
 
3. The game is amazing - Probably the coolest part of my job is that I often get to play the game in order to capture screenshots and videos.  Let me switch gears for a second and not speak as a marketer, but as a gamer…  Sonic Chronicles is great!  For example: Burning around the map as Sonic while being chased by monsters, only to escape by flying across chasms as Rouge the bat is a blast.  Also, exploring the maps to collect all the Chao eggs is pretty rewarding.  Especially once the eggs hatch and you get to bring those Chao into battle with you and use their powers against your enemies.  The combat is also really engaging since you can unlock devastating power moves by having the right combination of characters in your party.  I also enjoy customizing the characters in my party so they fit my play style. 

4. Its much less serious than our past work - Our past titles at BioWare have been fairly serious and had a more adult oriented theme, so it is refreshing to work within a world with a lighter tone.  It brings back the raw enjoyment of gaming with all the bright colors, punchy sounds, and tongue in cheek dialogue.  This makes you feel like a kid again; which we often have to do since to design a game for a kid, you need to think like one (What could be more fun?) 

5. Small enthusiastic development team - One thing that I am not used to from my past marketing roles is working with people who are my age.  Fortunately, many of the people who are developing Sonic Chronicles are around the same age as me.  This means that the office culture is enthusiastic, innovative, fresh thinking, and very inspired to work with Sonic since the developers grew up playing these games.  However, even though some of the members on the team may be younger, every member has a wealth of experience and are among the most talented in the industry.  So we have a lot of fun, and board room meetings are not of the traditional type.  It is not uncommon to start a meeting by talking about the latest games we have played, then be interrupted by a Nerf gun attack while we are drawing concept pictures of Sonic and his friends on a whiteboard.  Also, the development team is fairly small, so everybody knows each other well.  This makes work more like hanging out with your friends while creating something really cool.  

Those in a nutshell are the five main reasons why working on Sonic Chronicles has been so enjoyable thus far.  There are numerous other reasons, but if I was to list them all this would no longer be a blog – it would be a full website!  Fortunately for our fans, I believe that the amount of pleasure we have had making the game will be dwarfed by the amount of fun they will have playing Sonic Chronicles.

You can check them out at:  http://flickr.com/photos/segaeurope/sets/72157605086471726/ 

Have a good weekend!

AAUK

Check out this, it’s a Facebook group for Sonic Chronicles which is being run I believe by our friends at BioWare; the photo albums have some high quality pictures of the story art featured in the Nintendo Power exclusive story - declare you are a fan now and sign up!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sonic-Chronicles/43044535552?ref=s

I would like to say a big thank you to everyone that participated in the Sonic Chronicles: A Race To Name competition and to all those who voted for their favourite name.

We received thousands of votes for this unique competition and there was some fantastic support taking place across many sites throughout Europe.  We look forward to implementing ‘The Zoah’ into the game and congratulations to the winners, SEGA Nerds, especially since they beat an entry from Bioware! 

We will continue to keep you updated with the latest news on Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood.  Look out very soon for developments to the game’s product site as we reveal more features and screenshots. 
Thank you again!

Michele – Sonic Chronicles SOE Brand Manager  

IT’S THE ZOAH
Sonic Chronicles Competition Winner Announced

LONDON (18th March, 2008) – SEGA Europe Ltd. today confirmed that the recent competition, A Race To Name, where Sonic The Hedgehog fans could vote upon names for a new race selected by key Sonic fansites, and European gaming websites, finally has a winner. After thousands of votes were cast, it became clear that it was going to be a closely fought race between The Zoah, The Gravitus and The Dusk.  Fans were hastily casting votes right up until the last minute but in the end only a handful of votes separated the contenders, and like all competitions it could only have one winner with The Zoah prevailing as the fan-favourite. 

Congratulations to www.seganerds.com who originally suggested The Zoah which will now be included in the forthcoming, hotly tipped, Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood™ for the Nintendo DS™ system. The Zoah will be featured as a new enemy race for Sonic The Hedgehog to pit his wits against in 2008.

Developed by industry admired story-telling specialists, BioWare, Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood is an RPG adventure set to take the DS by storm this Autumn. 

For more information about BioWare please visit www.bioware.com

That’s it its all over! The poll on Sonic City is now CLOSED.  We’ll be announcing the winning name soon.  We’re also working on Sonic City, would like to apologise for any inconvenience and are working to resolve the current issues with the site.

As a result of this… I’ve not been able to put up on there my next SST article from his royal SEGA-ness Mr. Richard Jacques.  So if you go to the main SEGA blog (http://blogs.sega.com/europe) you’ll be able to find it there.

Have a good weekend!
AAUK

Hi guys, a friendly reminder that the Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood™ Race To Name poll will end at 5pm UK time this Friday.  The contest has been fierce and even now at this stage there is no clear winner, in fact as of late yesterday it’s a three-way tussle for victory with only a handful of votes separating the top names.

So if you haven’t voted yet, you still have time - check out Sonic City (http://www.sonic-city.com) for a static link to the poll.

Every vote counts - make sure yours does!

While we deal with these really annoying server issues we’ve been able to put up a sort of “dummy” Sonic City.  When you go to sonic-city.com click on the link thats in what should be the articles section and you can still vote.

More updates when we have them.