Retro Gaming Australia

With Sonic the Hedgehog being Sega’s breakout success in the home console space, it seemed only natural to develop a Sonic game to promote their new CD based add-on, the Mega CD. The Sonic development team essentially splintered off into two groups; a team at Sega Technical Institute in the USA led by Yuji Naka which developed Sonic 2, and a team in Japan led by Naoto Oshima which made Sonic CD. This led to Sonic CD having a distinctly different feel to Sonic 2.

Sonic 3D: Flickies’ Island (or Sonic 3D Blast in North America) is an isometric Sonic game developed by Traveller’s Tales for the Mega Drive and Saturn in 1996. The Saturn version advertised here was a desperation effort by Sega to cover the gap left in their holiday lineup by the delay and later cancellation of the planned 3D Sonic game, Sonic Xtreme.

It’s kind of sad to think about it, but Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was the last universally praised Sonic game. Sega really threw everything they had at the sequel – it was a joint development effort between Japanese and American development teams. It was bigger, better looking, had a great soundtrack and some of the best momentum based platforming you’ll ever see. It was the #1 best selling game on the Mega Drive and Genesis, and may still be the best selling title in Sega’s catalogue.

We’ve seen the evidence on the Classification Board, but Sega has finally confirmed that their 3D Classics range will be heading to the eShop in Australia, Europe and North America before the end of 2013.

The releases are being staggered over a period of four weeks:

November 28: 3D Space Harrier, 3D Super Hang-On
December 5: 3D Sonic The Hedgehog, 3D Altered Beast
December 12: 3D Ecco the Dolphin, 3D Galaxy Force II
December 19: 3D Shinobi III, 3D Streets of Rage

These games will set you back $US5.99/€4.99/£4.49 a piece. Australian prices have not been confirmed but sources expect them to be around $AU8.

Source: Vooks

Pix’n Love Publishing has set a rather high standard with their first two English books – the History of Nintendo series, so when I found out they were preparing a book on the history of Sonic the Hedgehog, I was pretty damn excited. That excitement increased further when it was revealed that Sega had endorsed the book.

The History of Sonic the Hedgehog promises an in-depth look at Sega’s most famous character and all of the games he has featured in, with plenty of choice pieces of concept art, colour pictures and factoids you may not know. (continue reading…)

Sonic Adventure marked the long awaited return of Sega’s mascot and the franchise’s first foray into full 3D. Widely praised at the time, and one of the most successful games on the Dreamcast, critics have been less friendly to the game over time, given that it was the first game to introduce a large number of playable characters who weren’t Sonic.

Ever play through Sonic the Hedgehog on the Sega Mega Drive and think to yourself ‘I wonder what this looks like from Sonic’s perspective’? Well, check out the above video and you’ll soon know.

Machinima have released a video of a first person 3D Green Hill Zone Act 1 – movement is a tad wonky and speed is lacking, but it certainly looks the part. This isn’t the first such video though, YouTuber AngusFilms1 created a first person 3D version of this very level a couple of years ago, which you can take a look at here. It’s a speedier run, but lacks the environmental detail present in the before mentioned video.

Source: Retro Collect

It seems to be a week of Sonic specials! You can nab a bunch of Sonic (and some other Sega titles) on Xbox Live live on the cheap at the moment, and now you can get you fill of cheap Sonic games on iOS and Android too.

Various Sonic games are AU$0.99 on the App Store and AU$1.08 on the Google Play Store – titles include Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic CD, Sonic Spinball, Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I, Sonic the Hedghog 4: Episode II, Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing, and more. It even looks like some other Sega titles are available for cheap too, but they might always be that price.

So, why all the Sonic specials? Sonic is 22 on June 23. Thanks Sonic, now I feel old.

Hot off the heels of his Super Mario Bros. project Princess Rescue, homebrew developer Sprybug has brought Mario’s cross-platform rival Sonic the Hedgehog to the Atari 2600.

A short demo ROM of the game can be downloaded from AtariAge.

The project is quite early, but it’s still pretty impressive what Sprybug has managed to accomplish in a short period of time.

It would seem that Sega is intending to push their 3D Classics in Australia later this year, with 3D Sonic the Hedgehog and 3D Altered Beast both receiving classifications from the Australian Classification Board earlier in the week.

Previously, 3D Space Harrier had been classified by the Board as well.

Sega’s mum on the subject, but I suspect we’ll see their full 3D Classics lineup by the end of the year.