Retro Gaming Australia

During their Sonic Boom event at San Diego Comic-Con, Sega has announced Sonic Adventure 2 for PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade.

Such a release for Sonic Adventure 2 was rumoured last month when the title briefly appeared on the official Xbox site. The official announcement was sparse in details, but the title appears to be a HD re-release as part of Sega’s renewed focus on digital content.

Footage of the reveal informs us that Sonic Adventure 2 was be “leaking onto consoles this fall”.

For a limited time, Red Rooster is offering a host of Sonic the Hedgehog toys with their kids meals.

There are seven toys in all – three “3D” cups (featuring Sonic, Tails and Amy), an expandable flyer, a pencil case, a bouncy ball and a pack of cards for memory.

So if you’re after some Sonic merch and are unafraid of being judged by spotty teenagers for ordering a meal meant for children, this should be right down your alley.

Can you believe it’s been 21 years since Sonic the Hedgehog came out? It’s a timeless piece of software – just as enjoyable today as it was all of those years ago. It’s one of the finest pieces of software to have come out of Sega – what I wouldn’t give to see the company pull out another industry shaker like this.

A couple of months ago we published a story confirming that Pix’n Love Publishing’s The History of Sonic would be seeing an English release in June.

After hearing little from the publisher about the release of the book over the last three weeks, we’d assumed the worst. Fortunately, it appears that Pix’N Love will be teaming up with Udon Entertainment to bring the book to a wider audience. Udon has regularly teamed up with Capcom and Sega to release localised versions of their art books, as well as publishing a long line of comics based on Capcom characters.

Unfortunately, the release date of the book has been pushed back all the way to late October. Hopefully that means that Udon will be working with Pix’n Love to ensure that the quality of translation is up to par, since that was the only weak point of the first two History of Nintendo books.

You can pre-order The History of Sonic here.

Source: GoNintendo

Sonic Pocket Adventure channels the spirit of the early Sonic the Hedgehog games on the Mega Drive and uses that for inspiration for one of the best portable Sonic games out there. Although it couldn’t save the fate of the Neo Geo Pocket Color, it did help to make the system worth owning.

Sonic Blast for the Sega Game Gear is set for re-release in Europe via the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console service.

Released in 1996, Sonic Blast was the last Sonic game to appear on the handheld. Players reprise the roles of Sonic and Knuckles and are tasked with collecting five Chaos Emeralds and defeating Eggman. Sonic Blast imbues Sonic with the ability to double jump to reach higher areas.

Sonic Blast releases on June 14 in Europe, so it should be available in Australia later today.

Source: Siliconera

Sonic Shuffle is Sega’s attempt to latch onto the Mario Party craze. It an admirable effort – they even brought in Mario Party developer Hudson Soft in to assist with development – but the pace of the game is just far too slow, not to mention the insufferable load times and cheating AI.

Pix’N Love Publishing, the company that brought you the fantastic History of Nintendo books (reviews here and here) announced yesterday that they will be publishing an English version of their History of Sonic book which was released in France this week.

There had been doubt as to whether the book would be published after comments from the company concerning lower than expected sales of The History of Nintendo Vol. 2: Game & Watch. Responding to queries about the sonic book yesterday, a company representative stated that sales of The History of Nintendo Vol. 2: Game & Watch had picked up, and that they will be going ahead with plans to publish The History of Sonic, with an intended late June release date.

Two other Pix’N Love Publishing titles, The History of Mario and Gunpei Yokoi: Life and Philosophy of the Nintendo Gaming God are planned for English release sometime this year.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 HD, the unofficial fan remake, has been officially discontinued.

On the game’s Facebook page, Team S2HD’s project leader cited problems with the lead programmer and recent resignations as reasons for the sad news. The keylogger allegedly found in the recently released alpha version of the game didn’t help either.

Many Sonic fans were eagerly awaiting Sonic the Hedgehog 2 HD’s release, so the news of its cancellation has been met with much disappointment.

The recently released alpha version of fan remake Sonic the Hedgehog 2 HD has been quite popular. Unfortunately, it turns out that there was a nasty surprise in the package.

Most anti-virus software will pick the game up as a source of infection – many assumed that this was a false positive, but an employee from one of the major anti-virus houses conducted an analysis of the code to prove that this was not the case. Sure enough, a keylogger was nestled inside the Sonic 2 HD code.

The team at Sonic Retro has put out a PSA to assure users that the keylogger hasn’t “phoned home” as they put it, but it’s still kind of nasty that this could happen.