“Get out you ugly prototype!” - Shadow The Hedgehog, Sonic Adventure 2

The countdown begins again…
http://www.sonic-city.com

I’ve talked before about Sonic City, about just why it disappeared in a ball of flame and flailing limbs and making strange gargling noises like Chaos 0 in that Sonic Short on Newgrounds. You know the one I’m talking about.  I’ve also recently teased you with a small snippet of image that most of you guessed correctly was relating to what will be the new Sonic City.

Well, I can now reveal that the new Sonic City is indeed on its way and myself and a few others with, you know, t3h internets skillz are working very hard in order to get it up and running. A new splash page has gone up which gives you a little glimpse into how different the new Sonic City is going to look.

Essentially the last Sonic City was the product of a lot of different people with different ideas, all of whom as they were contracted (the changing from Sonic City 1.0  - remember THAT anyone?) tended to leave as things were delaaaayed. Not handy.  Plus ‘The Community’ wasn’t as well represented/interacted with then as they are now. Wonder who did that? Hmm.

Anyway we (meaning me) made a good stick of trying to make SC2.0 work, but it wasn’t something I’d made or had much of a hand in, just something I’d managed to drag screaming out the door before promising to buy it a slice of cake if it stopped complaining and just BEHAVED. Obviously it finished this dessert at the end of “A Race to Name” and promply broke down irreversably.

So how are things different in the new Sonic City?

Well for a start its darn prettier, one of our designers has cooked up the design, which you’ll fully see at launch, and its amazing. The splash though should clue you in because I’ve had a rather large hand in the way its formed.

But what’s going in it? That’s my choice.
New additions? Me too.
Layout? Yup, that’s me as well.
Style and tone and the primary design approvals? Me.

That’s the big difference, this is my little vision of Sonic City - I’ve taken what you guys have said on the old one and added it in the mix, I’ve been noting stuff down for the best part of a year.  I’m overseeing the whole project so you know its gonna be good.

Things won’t be all up at first, we’ll start (unless matters change) with some basics and a GREATLY increased games archive; seriously you have no idea just how much more information is going to be added in.  Then we’ll move on to the characters and some other nice new things.

“Are you going add some of the other older characters to the site ArchangelUK?”

If I have my way.

Sonic City.

You love it and so do our Japanese friends - notice how Sonic Channel’s wallpapers are using the English text descriptions from City? Yes, SONICTEAM and SOJ like City too, which as you might expect means a lot to it’s guardian, yours truly.

However, as you know since Sonic City, er, keeled over backwards bellowing hysterically for mercy at the end of A Race To Name from the traffic its been conspicuously absent from general items. You will also be aware if you keep track of my fansite doings and of course here on the Blognik (you ARE paying attention, yes?) that I’ve been in the process of getting things down on paper for a new iteration of the site.

So the latest: I can tell you while there’ll be some visual changes there won’t be much by way of any major graphical changes. Boo hiss.

But it now seems pretty set that the site will be vastly expanded upon - though this won’t be obvious at first exactly and it will also thankfully, for me at least, be MUCH easier to update with new items. Much as others may like slaving over a hot, crazily complex nest of xml files, er, I don’t. Sorry.

Another annoyance of the old Sonic City was various sections were somewhat destined to hit a dead-end anyway. The characters section for instance was such, as we would require Sonic Channel-style artwork for any new entrant. Considering Channel (City’s Japanese counterpart) has stopped doing that style you can see the problem.

I won’t even start on how many problems the Games Archive gave us with those timeframe sections: 1991-1994, etc.

The aim of course is to incorporate as much as possible to tie in with the Content Management System (CMS) operating on the new SEGA West site. Now Sonic City is going to require a lot of reconfiguration in this regard and I and the SOE online design team sat through a meeting the other day where we thrashed out various details and argued various cases for this that and the other.

One of the things I’m realllly high on is that we get the Downloads section sorted for you guys; this would hold things like the you’d see on Channel but a little bit of a different style. When I’ve had a spare second I’ve been putting together some designs for things which I hope you’ll like; I’ve always found that the Sonic fanbase have been of a “We don’t CARE what it is - Gimme gimme!” persuasion when it comes to media. Heh. But I know you’re appreciative of truly cool stuff, so hopefully you’ll dig what I’m considering.

So, lots of work to do. There’s a change eh?

Sonic City is looking to go up in phases - which I still have to time naturally - but hopefully we’ll be going back live with the first of these near the end of July. This date is obviously not set in stone, but like Big the Cat it’s not going to be shifted easily.

I’m going to be keeping you up to speed (where I can) on our progress with the site, mainly because I’d have thought you’d be interested to know.

“Let the speed mend it!”
AAUK

Sonic City.

I did NOT write the majority of the text, I have only done bits - the original texts in the vast majority were done a long while ago by someone external so criticising me about Wikipeida-isms are grossly unfair.

I’m working through the bios and things to give you a lot better facts, remove the  and get things up to date.  This is a never-ending job.  We will include fan rumours and discussions where appropriate.

Can you PLEASE get off my case on this now?

A late one, but if you’ve not noticed before Sonic City got an update Friday evening (late Friday evening… blasted CMS) where I interviewed Bentley Jones about his new album and career moves post-Dreams Of An Absolution and Remix Factory.  The interview was notable for many things but we manage to get details that it seems Mr Jones will be working on other games music for Sonic in the future!

Check out the interview here: http://www.sonic-city.com/en/articles/1816.html

I wasn’t able to ask him about his early days with Overclocked Remix though.

I’m also taking the opportunity today to implement some updates to characters and information on Sonic City - I’d like to take this chance to remind people that while I wrote SOME of the copy, I did not write the majority of it so please stop complaining about the “fan bits” on forums as I certainly didn’t add those.

Also remember SONICTEAM approved those comments being on there - we don’t mind you guys making up your own theories you know?