Hmm…

Sorry for the delay on this rather more important things than blogging came to pass! Continuing on from last week, here’s the answers to the quiz that was used to determine who would get to sleep in the Sonic Room, thus being the first person to do so.

1. What’s the number of (controllable) female characters in All-Stars Racing ? This does not include Avatars, Miis or any that may make up part of the scenery of a stage – like Samba’s Lynda for instance.

SIX – Amy Rose, Ulala, Zobiko, the red ChuChu mouse, MeeMee (who appears as part of AiAi’s All-Star Move, hence somewhat controllable) and Kazooie. Someone, naming no names, put 13 for this… er, yes…

2. Including Sonic, how many characters were in the axed band idea from Sonic 1?

Five, including the character that would become Vector!

3. What colour are Sonic’s eyes in Sonic 4? (This would be the one for irony. )

Green. Everyone got this right, I wonder why(!) I did joke with the guys that I’d've also accepted “does it really matter” or “gumball coloured”.

4. Nigel Kitching from Fleetway’s Sonic the Comic wanted to include Big the Cat in the Sonic Adventure storyline as he reminded him of which anime character?

Totoro

5. What’s the name of the main boss in Sonic Chronicles? A bonus mark was also on offer for the name and full title.

Ix, full title being Imperator Pir’Oth Ix (no one got that incidentally)

6. As you all no doubt recall Shadow cursed during his game, but other characters also did – name one.

Espio and the General where the main ones I thought of here… but there are others.

7. What was the name of the bear animal friends from Sonic 2?

Becky.

8. What were Sonic and Tails sleeping in in the Adventures of Sonic The Hedgehog opening?

Hammocks

9. In the Egyptian episode of Sonic Underground’s song, what word did Sonia “cleverly” rhyme with “brothers”?

“Brother” – yes, you read that right. She rhymed brothers with brother.

10. Omochao has been in a SEGA franchise other than Sonic – what?

Phantasy Star

As it happens we ended up with a three-way tie on 6/10 (the worst score being 3/10), between Dreadknux, his partner  (who actually got a different six correct to Dreadknux) and Overlord from Sonic Retro. Luckily I had a tie-breaker prepped so if you knew that Big The Cat’s weight was 280 Kg you’d've done very well here. Dreadknux came closest with a guess of 300 kg. He celebrated. Everyone else looked for something to throw at him.

With Alton Towers in sight we pulled up, after a couple of heart-stopping moments trying to get the coach around the tricky roads of Alton village and all piled out to stretch our legs.  We were greeted immediately by SEGA fan Umiyuri who had also been invited and not long afterwards the coach arrived with the lanky Vger (Emerald Coast) and Shadzter (Sonic Stadium) who despite being none too well had come along to soak up the atmosphere at the very least.

With my merry band of Sonic community guys and online contacts in tow we went through the gates to the deserted ticket area to be met by Sonic.

“Typical you’d've got here first.” I complained, as the hedgehog started tapping his foot and looking at his non-existent watch. Sonic clearly was in a hurry to get on with things, he shrugged at me and started posing for pictures after straightening his spines out a bit (pictured).

After a brief introduction to Alton Towers we made our way down rapidly to the ride which even from a distance looked awesome.

Destructoid’s Hollie and Vger make a beeline for Sonic Spinball.

Now, let me tell you, walking through a deserted theme park is pretty creepy… in fact down right unnerving to see the place so devoid of life. Soon though we came to the ride entrance, the ride was already in progress and took some people by surprise, the thought I think was that it was going to be very “kiddie” but no – Spinball is a proper rollercoaster with high vertical loops and really fast twists.

Sonic once caught a fish THIS big…

A quick opening ceremony followed, where Sonic discovered that he couldn’t get his gloved fingers through the scissors… whoops!  He remained cool though and got one of the SEGA staff to cut it for him spindashed the ribbon slicing it to bits. Hooray! Everyone piled forward and started taking photos of the ride, getting very excited. Like most major rides at Alton Towers there’s a photo booth where you can get ridiculous images of you either being scared witless or doing an incredibly stupid pose. There was also to one side a collection of three claw machines containing…

PLUSHIES! Gajillions of them!

After dragging the community guys away from the stuffed toys we realised the ride was now open and race to be part of the queue, though everyone took the time to watch the first public riders of Spinball go around and it became apparent quickly that this was not going to be the teacup ride. Incidentally, for posterity the first public riders were Hollie from Destructoid, TurtleGirl from GirlGamers and G from SEGA Nerds – whether or not G suffered like G did I forgot to ask. Anyway my party got on and after a few moments we were on our way. You know you’re in for a bit of a fun time immediately, its kind of disconcerting making the first climb looking diagonally from the direction you are going.

The car swings around as you go which is obviously somewhat dependant upon the people in the car so every ride is different. The first few turns were great fun, however with the car swinging I was actually facing away from the ride when it happened – we hit the first big drop. Of course being unsighted I didn’t actually see the first big drop and I was completely unprepared for it… I also did it backwards so I’ll admit it scared the hell out of me. Big loops at breakneck speeds soon followed including the big vertical loop where you are at 90 degrees (I was facing skyward on that one again taking the big drop backwards >_>).

We went on it a second time as people began getting their free photos, courtesy of Alton Towers.  The community enjoyed the ride immensely, had great-

fun and were keen to get as many goes as possible-

to perfect their Spinball photos, after all the-

-OH OKAY you can go on the blasted crane machines!

Honestly, show a Sonic community person a crane and a plush and they will immediately go for it.  Of course being the CLAW MACHINE KING I immediately retreived several plushes to general coo-ing and clapping. I gave away several to community members as my skillz paid their plush requiring billz.  I think I won about ten or something ridiculous like that. Claw machines and those Arabian Derby/Dolphin Race ‘roll balls up an alley into holes to make your character move’  machines – I’m ace at both. Something rather strange happened though, because the pound I put in seemed to be magic…in that it gave us all rather more goes than it perhaps should of done. Ho hum, plushies for all!

Actually the amount of plushies the crew’s collective efforts across all three machines resulted in got kind of embarassing and I had to physically drag Flyboy Fox and Turbo from the machines when we realised that people were going back to the hotel bar to check in so we rushed back.

In an ironic twist of fate a discarded plush from another claw machine was found abandoned on top of a nearby bin. You’d never believe what it was if I just told you so we took a picture of that as well!

Will wear raccoon tail for food…

In the next blog the the community crew hit the bar, Dreadknux hits the Sonic Room and we gear up to par-tay!

With the game out in America today there’s one last trailer to show – the launch trailer!  Check it out below citizens for we no longer must we live in a world without racing banana cars against forklifts!

I’ve been all over the place today talking about All-Stars Racing, mainly as its out in America tomorrow and I spent most of the weekend playing the heck out of it.

In some other places I’ve revealed various nuggets of information but haven’t actually put them up here, so I thought I would do so now.

• Two Sonic R music tracks do feature, Can You Feel The Sunshine and Super Sonic Racing.
• The music also contains a piece from Sonic CD and Sonic Rush tracks also feature… but Wrapped In Black doesn’t. BOOOO! (Sorry, I love Wrapped in Black…) Though the Wrapped In Black end of level jingle does feature.
• The Sonic CD track is the Japanese/Euro version of Palmtree Panic (Present) by the way.
• And… Fish Hits! plays when Big does his All-Star move.
• Switching difficulty to “Off” removes the AI from a multiplayer game.
• Race distances can be set between one and nine laps in length.
• There IS a reference to Ryo and sailors in the game. You can officially rejoice.
• There is at least one line of dialogue from the announcer when talking about Big that…well… it made me choke on my drink.
• Amigo’s boost is probably the most powerful in the game. It certainly seems to be from off the line.
• There is a very clever way of getting the “no collisions” achievement.
• It is entirely possible to legitimately do the “Wonder Boy” (winning by reversing over the line) achievement.
• You will definitely need to master drift for later Super Monkey Ball levels as they mirror the games a lot. This means lots of 90 and 180 degree turns!
• Crank The Heat Up! Also features from the Sonic side of things, it really suits racing to.
• The instrumental version of E.G.G.M.A.N can be purchased too
• One of the multiplayer modes, Grab, consists of you battling for control of the seven chaos emeralds… VERY addictive.
• There are three battle arenas – the Curien Mansion graveyard, “Seaside Square” and a Monkey Ball level arena with ramps and a bridge.

You’ve seen the 360, you’ve seen the Wii, you’ve even seen the PS3… but now check out All-Stars Racing on the Nintendo DS!

I can’t speak for the US at the moment, but I can confirm that the EU version of the Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing demo is now available on Playstation Network.

Its 827MB in size and unlike the 360 version, PS3 owners get to enjoy a different experience – namely Rampart Road a track from Billy Hatcher & The Giant Egg. A level that has you quite literally racing all over the castle itself as you avoid rolling eggs, heavy snow drifts and devious crows – they may look like cats but they are indeed crows!

Your characters are Sonic and Dr. Eggman – a surprise for me as as far as I was aware it was going to be Amy Rose! As an FYI, you can alter the difficulty settings, the demo should be set to “Advanced” from the get go but you can reduce this to Basic if you find the action a little too intense. Same situation as the 360 demo basically.

Master drifting around corners and pull off aerial tricks to get a speed boost. Use the range of weapons available to batter, confuse and generally slow your rivals and take that chequered flag. There’s even a sneaky shortcut at one point, see if you can spot it and make it work to your advantage!

Ladies and Gentlemen – start your engines!

ASR Dev Diaries – Part 4 – Where I actually talk about the game for a change…

Why hello again! It’s me, Steve Lycett, inviting you to come inside out of the cold, hang up your coat, grab a nice cup of tea and have a guided tour of the Sumo office! We’ll take a look at some of the work being done on ASR today. It’s about time I talked about the game I’m sure!

First, welcome to the SEGA room. You can tell it’s the SEGA room as we’ve got our OutRun2 and Virtua Tennis 3 cabs over there – occasionally I have to get the spanners to the OutRun one to keep it in working fettle!

You’ll notice we have a light side of the room, that’s where the artists like to sit. They’re over to our right and are busy finishing off all the tracks and characters you’ll soon be playing.  ASR has been a big job art wise, we’ve got 24 tracks in the game, spread across 8 classic SEGA IP’s. As you’d expect, we’ve got Sonic tracks, so there’s ones based on Seaside Hill, Casino Park and of course Final Fortress. This game we’ve taken our Sonic cues from Sonic Heroes, but classic fans don’t worry too much, we’ve also revived a few Badniks to chase you around!

There’s also tracks based on Super Monkey Ball, Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg, Jet Set Radio Future, Samba De Amigo and House of the Dead EX. They’re a diverse bunch taking in all manner of lovely sights, a few special cameos, shortcuts and huge jumps galore. Plus of course the obligatory corkscrews! Oh – and before I forget to mention, that’s not counting the 3 special Battle Arena’s we have too. So I guess that makes 27 tracks.

Of course, the poor art team didn’t get to make just 27 tracks. They also worked along with our special art team in Sumo India to make another set of 27 tracks for the Wii. These are all the same tracks, but re-worked to run as nicely as possible on the Wii. So I guess that’s 54 tracks. Oh but wait, we also had to make the same set of tracks for the DS, so that’s 81 tracks. Oh and we also had to optimise the tracks for Split-screen multiplayer so that’s… Bah, I’ve run out of fingers to count on!

No wonder the art team has been going grey! That’s just the tracks too!

On top of all those, we’ve also got over 20 playable characters. As you’ve probably spotted, all our characters have their own unique vehicle to boot. So Sonic has his own car, the Speed Star, which we developed in conjunction with Sonic Team over in Japan.  So yes, Sonic has his own car, but we’re not limited to cars. Oh no! We’ve also got characters on bike, so Shadow, Ryo and others can take to the road/beach/jungle – and if they do a wheelie, gain boosts where the cars can’t. Did I mention I like motorbikes? I can’t think why the bikes got a special move no-one else did!

If bikes aren’t your thing (and why not!) then you’ll also be pleased to hear we’ve got other selections. You’ll have seen Tails in his all new Tornado Racer, but we’ve also got Ulala in her custom Astro Glider and we’ve even managed to cram four ChuChu into a Rocket to race too. Plus we might be enjoying racing with a very special sentient space ship too! The flyers have their own trick too, whilst they don’t get wheelies, they don’t have to worry about being slowed down on surfaces other vehicles can’t run full speed over.

All these characters have to be built, textured, set up and animated. I should take a moment to mention the animation, we’ve tried to get a lot of life and energy into the game, and I think our animation team has done an amazing job! You’ll see characters react as they’re both winning and losing, watching each other pass and firing weapons at each other.

Then we had to do a whole suite of special effects for the All-Star moves, we’ve got characters going Super, Choas Spears, Monkey Balls, Airships, Giant Frogs, the lot. Again, these need specific assets for all platforms… It’s been a lot of work!

Let’s leave the art time alone to finish the job then…

If we wander across to the other side of the room, we get to where the coders live. You’ll notice the lights are off here…

All this art is great, but without an engine to power it, it’s not going to be much of a game. To this end we’ve been using our in-house Sunshine engine to make it all whizz around at high speed. If you’ve played our OutRun conversions, VT3 or Sega Superstars Tennis, you’ve already played with Sunshine!

Of course, each platform has its own tailored set of Sunshine too. So we’ve got specific rendering on PS3, on 360 and on Wii. We’ve got to make sure that whether you play Single Player or 4 Player, it’s nice and smooth an enjoyable too. So the code team have been wringing out every last drop from each platform the game is on.

They’ve also been making sure you have good AI to race against too. We have three distinct difficulties you can pick from with the AI. Start on Beginner and get to grips with the game, and the AI will go easy on you. Move up to Advanced, and the gloves come off! If you think you’re a racing legend, tip the slider up to Expert – then we’ll see how good you really are. You’ll need to drift all those corner, fight for lines and use your weapons tactically to win. You’ll also need to master the tricks you can do mid-air for more boost too! The AI certainly has!

Code wise, they’ve also been busy with our Mission Mode. Here we’ve got a diverse set of missions from such things as a bike only race, to smashing pots with Big, boosting as much as you can with Beat – and well let’s say there’s all manner of different things in there.

We’ve also been busy on the multiplayer side. All the console versions have full online support, including DS. Go out and race with who you like. If you want to play with just friends you can too. If you want to add AI to mix, go for it!

It doesn’t end their either. Back in split-screen land, you can opt to play on our Arena’s in a number of modes. Go for a straight battle, or play Capture the Chao, King of the Hill or compete to grab those Chaos Emeralds!  Or go for a Knockout race, you really don’t want to be in last place when that countdown runs out…

Actually – we’ve got to visit the DS team now, they’ve been busy building the game from scratch on DS. We’re really, really proud of our DS version, we’ve managed to pack the whole game from the big platforms into that tiny little cartridge.

Finally, whilst we’re touring, there is just time to wave at the Design department. No matter how big a SEGA fan you think you are – you’ve got a long way to go before you beat these guys at their SEGA knowledge. Whether they’re writing character bio’s for the SEGA shop and SEGA collection, of tuning the handling, or forcing the art team to sneak in more cameo’s and references, they’re always trying to force in more SEGA than is probably healthy.

Finally, before we shake hands and wave goodbye, you can cast a look at where the Production team sits. Yes, I know we’re the boring ones obsessed with schedules and budgets and paperwork, and the unpopular ones for making everyone stay late. Though I can tell you, when we show up with enough Pizza to feed an army, we do get the *occasional* smile! But spare us a thought; we have to make sure the unruly lot actually finishes the game on time so you can all play it!

So that’s our little tour over, you’ve been in, seen us all busy at work, and yes, we’ve got more than enough suggestions on what else we could cram in, and whilst we’ve hoped you have enjoyed your visit, please show yourself out – as we’ve got to get back to finishing the game off!

Gotta love the fanbase, the story begins with me lurking around the Sonic Stadium Message  Board a few weeks back answering some questions on their ASR thread.  Now for some reason SSMB go-er Casanova has been joking for ages about the possibility of a “1970’s Trousers Mode” for ASR, presumably where all concerned are wearing bell-bottoms and crazy luminescent patterns.

And corduroy.

Anyway I jokingly dismissed this as ludicrous when surely a better mode is available – Steamboat Willie mode! That’s right, a mode based upon the style of Mickey Mouse’s very first outing.

I thought seeing the SEGA characters designed in this style would be pretty cool, could you imagine a Jet Set Gramophone for instance? I set the challenge that the first person to send me a picture of the cast in that style would win a prize. I was rather pleased to say I had two entries within 15 minutes!

Check them out:

First Doctor Eggman’s entry (Beat was added later) -

 
Followed close behind by Indigo Pearl.

I’m sending both goodie packs, nice one fellas!

Firstly yes, the Nintendo DS demo is out now in the US – it will be arriving in Europe soon.

Anyway, last night it further came to my attention that the SEGA Pass Americans amongst you had received an email about SEGA of America’s sweepstakes which confirmed the existance of a Ryo Hazuki figure.

What Ryo Hazuki figure? Why that’ll be this Ryo Hazuki figure:

Now SOA will today no doubt be regaling you with further details about the sweepstakes today, (they were off yesterday for President’s Day) which are available for the USA and Canada only – minus Puerto Rico and Quebec (sorry Red Hedgehog)! Edit: 75 are available through this.

However for everyone else who is currently muttering unsavory things, they are very limited indeed. The run is only 1000 globally. Don’t believe me? Check the back of the box!

 There we go. Now, to just confirm whilst we won’t be doing a sweepstake there will be opportunities for you to win one of the 50 Ryo Hazuki figures that after much effort I’ve managed to secure for Community Team purposes in Europe.  You’ll have to wait to see how you win them though.

Actually, let me correct myself – one of the 49 as I’m putting one aside for a certain website related to the character concerned.  I’ll be getting in contact with them once the figures actually arrive here.

As other sources are already reporting GAME have joined Gameplay.co.uk in offering the pre-order insentive of Forklift Ryo PDLC for PS3 and 360. This ties in with the Spanish version of GAME doing the same thing.

However I’m happy to be able to confirm all the other places as well!

UK – Gameplay.co.uk / GAME
Spain – GAME
Benelux- bol.com

I also understand the PDLC is also due to be available in Australia from JB HiFi, though their site isn’t listing it yet.