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If you want to know what’s happening in the world of Sonic the Hedgehog, then you’re in the right place! The Sonic Stadium’s News section is your first stop for all the latest information. Whether it’s news about video games, comics, TV shows or even movies, we have you covered!
Start your engines. Now turn off your engines because March isn’t until next week.
Continue reading Team Sonic Racing Hits PlayStation Plus in MarchA few weeks ago, we reported on some leaked images of what are clearly Sonic 2 Mcdonalds toys. Today, even better images of these toys have been leaked, this time including Sonic. This marks first time Sonic has had a Happy Meal toy since those McDonalds LCD games nearly a decade ago.
The images are low-res and their exact function is unclear, though it seems likely that they have some method of being propelled forward. With the movie a little more than a month away, we’ll likely be getting an official unveiling of these toys soon. In addition to these four, there are two others that have yet to be shown. If you want to see them, we’ve got them embedded below!
Jakks Pacific has unveiled its upcoming line of Sonic 2 movie toys on social media. Ever wanted to own a toy of the Tornado, or Jim Carrey Robnotnik? Well now you can!
The line-up includes plushies, action figures, the aforementioned Tornado biplane, and Sonic on some sort of skateboard type thing, complete with a giant ring. All of the action figures include some sort of accessory as well. Sonic and Knuckles both have snowboards, while Dr. Robotnik has one of his egg robots and a…coffee cup. Tails, most interestingly, appears to have some sort of gun. Check out the toys below:
These toys will launch in the spring, likely around the same time as the movie’s release on April 8. What are your thoughts on these toys? Tell us in the comments below!
Credit to Josiahblaze for sending this into our Discord newstips!
via Twitter
With the first wave of Steam Deck units shipping less than a week from now, it’s a good time to look at what Valve has given the confident thumbs up, the shaky sideways thumb, and the sad thumbs down. Steam has introduced a new page to check your library’s compatibility, so if you’ve got one on order (or plan on getting one), go check it out.
Continue reading Which Sonic Games Are Compatible with the Steam Deck (So Far) [UPDATED Feb. 23]UPDATE: The poll is closed, and the results are in:
The poll received a total of 1047 votes, the most one of these polls have gotten in years. Of those, 800 were yes, which is also the highest amount any character has gotten in years. That means yes won with 76.4% of the vote, placing her in the top 12 of all time, just ahead of Horizon Zero Dawn’s Aloy.
So what happens next? Who knows. As we said in the original article, there is no guarantee a Sally statue will get made, even with really good numbers. Chief among them, even if F4F decides it wants to make a statue, SEGA itself still needs to say yes.
Looking at previous polling winners, like NiGHTS into Dreams’ Reala, it will likely be years before a statue is available, if one even gets made.
Original story below:
More than five years since she last appeared in the Sonic comics, Princess Sally Acorn may finally have a shot at a new piece of merchandise via high-end collectibles maker First4Figures. F4F is currently running a poll asking its community whether or not they would pre-order a Sally Acorn statue. This is a weekly poll called “Thursday Temptations,” wherein F4F tests community interest in various characters. While the results of a poll do not guarantee the creation of a statue, F4F will at least explore doing something with the character if the numbers are strong enough.
As of this writing, the yeses are winning with 73% of the vote, 578 to 217. While those may seem like small numbers, that’s actually the most votes any character has gotten in this poll in years. The poll is set to run through Wednesday, though participants will need to join F4F’s Facebook community in order to vote.
There’s more to this than simply convincing F4F to make a Sally statue. According to Ian Flynn, who has long been boosting efforts to bring the character (and the other Freedom Fighters) back into the Sonic franchise, getting a statue would also simply be “big” for the character.
If you would pre-order a Sally Acorn statue, you can vote for the character here. We’ll update this post with the final results on Thursday.
The new Sonic 2 movie poster lacks a few notable names, including Tails voice actor Colleen O’Shaughnessey. This is especially strange, given how prominent the character has been featured in the movie’s marketing. Tails isn’t exactly a minor character. Also missing are Tika Sumpter (Maddie Wachowski) and Lee Majdoub (Agent Stone), despite the former also being on the poster.
So did Paramount simply forget to add their names? No. Who gets credit on movie posters and how they’re credited is actually rather complicated and involves a lot of negotiations with agents, fees, and what individual actors want. While this is pure speculation, it likely came down to how negotiations went. For anyone curious about the nature of poster billing credits, you can find a helpful article on the subject here.
Something similar occurred with Marvel’s Avengers Endgame, when actress Danai Gurira wasn’t credited on that movie’s poster despite being on it. Fan outcry eventually led to her name being added.
Thankfully, Sonic fans aren’t exactly being silent over this. On Twitter, many are voicing their displeasure over O’Shaughnessey’s omission:
It’s not often I’ll just outright state an opinion in a news article, especially on behalf of this website, but I’m going to go ahead and do there here: yes, Colleen O’Shaughnessey absolutely deserves to be on this poster, and Paramounts needs to make that change now.
SEGA’s latest remix project, Sonic Sessions, has continued to churn out superb remixes of classic Sonic songs, with an acoustic version of Live and Learn out today. As “acoustic” would imply, this puts Live and Learn to a slower, more laidback beat, with acoustic guitars replacing the electric guitars of the original song.
In addition to that, we’ve also got last week’s “edgy” remix of Fist Bump, which goes in the complete opposite direction! You can check them both out in Youtube embeds below:
This morning, Paramount and IGN have revealed a new poster for Sonic the Hedgehog 2:
This new poster highlights new and returning characters, the Sonic and Knuckles rivalry, the emerald, and the undersea ruins that previous trailers revealed. Small details in the hieroglyphs include pictures of Sonic, rings, emeralds, and faces that have a striking resemblance to those in Labyrinth Zone:
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 hits theaters on April 8, and is expected to hit Paramount+ in May with a sequel and Paramount+ series currently in development.
Yes, you read that right. Sonic Movie 2 hasn’t even been released yet, and they have already announced a sequel! And in 2023, there is going to be a live-action spinoff series with Knuckles!
Continue reading Sonic Movie 3 Is A Go! And So Is A Live-Action Spinoff Series With Knuckles!It’s been almost two decades since Sonic and friends have been part of a McDonald’s Happy Meal promotion, but it looks like Sonic will be returning to the Golden Arches very soon. Yesterday, several images hit Twitter showing three (out of six) Sonic 2 Happy Meal toys. Tails, Knuckles, and a yet unknown Eggman robot. The images were quickly taken down due to a copyright claim.
Now, McDonald’s just started a Stitch Happy Meal promotion, so if this is true, don’t expect to see the toys for a few weeks, and it may depend on what country you are in. While we’re putting this under rumor, the images being taken down quickly due to a copyright strike would suggest that they could be the real deal.
(Plus another two that have been recently released.)
Continue reading New Paramount Sonic 2 Trailer Shows New Footage and Classic Game BossJapan anime statue manufactuerer S-Fire have revealed they have a Sonic Adventure 2 statue, complete with Shadow and Sonic, sporting his SOAP shoes, in the works!
The statue was revealed at this year’s Wonfes 2022 in Japan, ith the press release on their blog announcing the “Super Situation Figure: Sonic and Shadow.”
This statue will mark the first use of the SOAP shoes model of Sonic since the early 2000’s.
Sonic the Hedgehog Creative Director Kazuyuki Hoshino announced via Twitter that he has been involved in the inception of the statue:
Currently, there is no release date for the statue, but I’m sure you’ll agree that this statue will excite many fans of the Sonic Adventure era!
More to come!
Source: S-Fire Twitter account
It may be the Year of the Tiger, but for us Sonic fans, it will always be the year of the hedgehog. Paramount Pictures Malaysia has just released some new advertisements celebrating the Chinese New Year. You can see these new renders down below. Sonic 2 hits theaters on April 12 and April 28 in Malaysia.
Great Eastern Animation list a 10″ soft toy of the Sonic Adventure character as “coming soon” on their website!
The company continue their line of fan favourite incarnations (in recent months they have released plushes of Tangle the Lemur, Fang the Sniper, and Emerl).
While there is no further info beyond the listing on the GE Animation website, Sonic Adventure fans will surely be excited at the prospect of getting this plush 24 years on from the release of the game.
More info to come!
Many thanks to @treasurehuntingsonic for the info!
If you want to shell out for an additional kit, you can make a REALLY long Green Hill.
Continue reading Toastergrl Offers More Unofficial Rebuild Instructions for LEGO SonicGamesRadar recently caught up with Sonic Team’s head Takashi Iizuka, to talk about what we can expect from the new Sonic the Hedgehog mainline title, due later this year.
While Iizuka remains tight-lipped about the detail of he drops tid-bits of information in the interview, including the introduction of “new combat styles” in the 2022 release.
GamesRadar were particularly probing about what Sonic Team have meant about “Open-zone freedom” and if this is the same as fully open world, but Iizuka still remains evasive:
“One of the biggest questions hanging over Sonic Frontiers is whether it will be set throughout a fully open world or whether the various biomes of Starfall Islands will be self-contained. SEGA has been careful with its language so far, referring to the 2022 release as being set in the ‘franchise’s first ever open-zone-inspired experience’ or explaining that it will offer ‘open-zone freedom’. When I ask Iizuka for clarity, he’s only willing to confirm that further details will be coming soon: “We don’t have too much more to share regarding the environment just yet, but stay tuned for more details this year.”
As always we will keep you up-to-date on any new developments with Sonic Fronitiers!
Source: GamesRadar
We don’t always report on every Sonic Forces: Speed Battle event, mostly because there are a LOT of them; however, this seems like an occasion worth mentioning, so let’s have at.
The current in-game event celebrating Lunar New Year features a new variant of IDW-favorite Whisper:
Lucky Whisper’s event runs until February 3, and she’s unlocked the standard event way: by completing missions and collecting 300+ cards across that time. Lucky Whisper’s boost item replaces her hover with a new “Golden Boost.”
While it has become common for guest characters like Pac-Man or Hello Kitty to join Sonic Dash, or for Sonic characters to get special event variants in both Dash and Speed Battle, this marks the first time a character who doesn’t originate from Sonic games to get a special variant version. Here’s hoping for an Arbor Day Tangle this Spring.
Source: Sonic News Network
Thanks to Dodger24848 for the tip!
Seems like we have this sort of thing every year from the Japanese Sonic marketing team, but today we have a new promotional messaging design announced by the official JP Sonic channel. Get ready for ‘Project Sonic ’22’!
Continue reading Sonic Official Announces “Project Sonic ’22” Promotional MessagingWell that didn’t take long: just a month after it was rendered impossible to purchase, Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 is back…sort of! SEGA revealed today that the game is being made available again via an offline version, which has had all of its online functionality stripped out. This means that features like daily stages, challenges, rankings, badges, flag stamps and titles, and social functions are gone. In addition to that, in-app purchases are also gone, and players can now own the entire game for just $0.99. When the game first launched, players needed to spend $5 to access the whole game.
Given that the game was barely a year and a half old when its online services were closed last year, it’s nice to see that the game will still be available in some form. The offline version is available on both the iOS and Android stores. Anyone who already owns the game can get the offline version for free via an update.
In an interview with ComicBook.com, Ben Schwartz said that Sonic 2 will be much bigger than Sonic 1 in terms of size. According to him, compared to the first one “this is a movie, this is a film, this is a movie-film.” Beyond praising his co-stars, Schwartz was pretty tight-lipped about everything else.
Sonic 1 was more or less a road trip comedy with a cartoon hedgehog. While this is pure speculation on my part, it sure does sound like Schwartz is saying this is going to be more akin to a summer blockbuster. While, again, this is pure speculation on my part meant to pad out this article, I’m not sure how else one can take “compared to the first one, this is a movie-film.” We’ll find out for sure when it debuts on April 8.
Check out the full interview on ComicBook.com.
On December 28, SEGA registered “SEGA NFT” as a trademark with the Japan Patent Office. The trademark included a logo:
SEGA has been exploring expanding into NFTs since April of last year, when they formed a partnership with Double Jump.Tokyo.
SEGA reaffirmed that interest in their December 14 investor Q&A, where they said they were going to continue experimenting NFTs to see how they might be used without drawing criticism or being perceived as using them “for simple money-making.”
Many have interpreted that last quote as to mean that SEGA was backing off NFTs, but that is not what SEGA was actually telling investors. And this trademark, which was registered weeks after the Q&A, shows SEGA’s continued interest.
If you’re still unsure what NFTs are, and what utilizing them would mean for SEGA, we recommend you take a look at this stellar article from our own GX.
Nickelodeon had a bit of a brand-takeover during yesterday’s NFL wildcard game between the the Dallas Cowboys and the San Francisco 49ers, with Spongebob, Ninja Turtles, and, of course, Paramount’s Sonic and Tails, appearing periodically to liven the game up in a family-friendly way. And slime. A lot of slime.
While Sonic played a small part in the festivities, the entire thing was off-the-wall nonsense, with Nickelodeon color schemes and CG overlays throughout, including these clips of the Cowboys scoring a touchdown as CG cannons drench the the endzone in green goo, a giant slime monster spawning on the field, or replaying a touchdown but with all the players as Ninja Turtles.
I might actually be inclined to watch sports if I knew that the stadium ground would swell into a gelatinous kaiju.
How to Build a Hedgehog.
Continue reading LEGO Releases Ideas Sonic the Hedgehog Designer VideoThe Green Hills call out for you.
Continue reading Shop Drop! (US) SEGA Shop has Classic Travel Locations for the New YearIf, you know, you wanted to do that for some reason.
Continue reading Play Sonic with Your Face in a New TikTok FilterA true world adventure.
Continue reading Sonic Frontiers to Support 12 Language OptionsShe has the master plan.
Continue reading Want to Enhance Your LEGO Eggman? Toastergrl Has Some Alternate InstructionsGoodbye, tiny train.
Continue reading After Seven Years, The Lalaport Fujimi SEGASonic Railway Service EndsWe don’t know what they’ll look like, but we know who’s making them.
Continue reading JAKKS Pacific to Handle Sonic Prime Toys and MerchSonic is no stranger to the FOMO demon that is mobile game limited time events. He’s hung out with PAC-MAN, he jammed with Taiko no Tatsujin, and Puyo Puyo Quest… is also a thing. That happened. And I really, really wish didn’t.
Anyhow, SEGA went mad with Sonic guesting in mobile games left and right. Here’s the breakdown:
Ulala is an idling RPG where you and three other pre-historic adventurers team up to travel many lands, grinding experience and taking on bosses in automated battle. You’ll incrementally upgrade your fighter with equipment, abilities, and animal friends. This was one of the few games I legitimately enjoyed my time with and continued to play regularly for six months. You get some pretty significant benefits chipping in about $5 a month. If you’re after event cosmetics, the cost is miserable, but if you just want to play the game, it’s pretty generous.
During the Sonic event, the blue boy himself has been thrown into this world by a portal, and he’ll need you to recharge enough energy to send him home by playing a very basic Sonic Dash-like minigame, and then inflicting as much damage to Eggman as possible. Your reward for completing tasks (and/or spending heaps of premium currency) is Sonic and Eggman cosmetics, the coolest of which is Eggman’s mustache, which lets your character pilot the hovercraft between encounters.
I’m a bit of a Shonen Jump fan, and my heart leapt at the thought of just how profoundly asinine this would be. I was not disappointed.
Legends Revive is a gashapon (or gacha) character collecting RPG following the events of the Fist of the North Star manga and anime, where expert martial artist Kenshiro walks the wasteland of the post-apocalypse and punches brawny Mad-Max rejects until they explode into viscera. So yeah, perfect game to add Sonic to. There’s no context to why Sonic’s there. He just is, bringing along a bunch of music that either doesn’t quite fit the tone of the game, or fits it perfectly.
The game itself is a mess of a design. The RPG part is simple, just tap your characters in the order you want to attack, do it at the right time to maintain a combo, and occasionally pop off super moves. But there are so many menus and modes and stores and daily missions stacked on top of it. The menu is awash in icons, it’s barely navigable and incredibly disorienting.
It’s not a good game, not in the slightest, but it had me hooked for a solid month on the novelty of running through the story and watching an extremely overpowered Sonic go super with his 1980’s beefcake anime buddies as Live and Learn blares out my tablet speakers.
I’ve seen that game’s title arranged about five different ways, so I don’t know what word order is supposed to be the most accurate anymore.
Sonic as a demon in an SMT Digital Devil-style world is conceptually funny, but the game just couldn’t hold my attention very long. Your avatar is conscripted into a war between two factions of fighters, each battling SMT style with digital demons on your phones. Much like the series proper, you’ll be recruiting, fusing, and building elemental combos with various demons, though this edition lets you recruit via gacha.
It isn’t bad. The visual style is very SMT, the characters can get a little wild, and boy is there plenty of story. But I think my hesitance just comes down to my lack of experience with the primary series. If you’re an SMT fanatic and don’t mind juggling your standard free-to-play complications, it seems like it has a touch more depth than you might expect from a mobile RPG.
I’m mad that I like this game. It doesn’t deserve praise, but darn it, it has really solid production values, fun characters, and entertaining writing. It’s also EVERY irritating mobile game design wrapped into a single package. Not only is it a town-building timer-waiting resource-tapping slog, but it’s also a gacha-collecting RPG-incrementing money-dumping grind.
The Sonic content was pretty entertaining, but it was designed for players at a much higher level than you could likely get to in the brief time the event ran. You could get adorable cookie version of both Sonic and Tails, but only by exchanging rings for pulls from a specialty limited-quantity gacha. If you got seven Chaos Emeralds from it, you could unlock one of the two heroes, but it sure seems like that seventh emerald was rigged to be the VERY LAST item you’d nab from the lot.
The production value of the Sonic content itself is great, with Smith and O’Shaughnessey doing voicework for the duo. With the event’s town-building decor, you can fill your town with Green Hill palm trees and chili dog stands. The cookies are cute, and they can do anything that any of the other characters can… but if you wanted them to get you past the third stage of their special Green Hill Eggman Battle stages, you’ll be out of luck. The power requirement jump between each Sonic RPG stage was huge. But don’t worry, for only $20, you could get the big pack that might net you 60% of a Sonic. Or one of the dozens upon dozens of subscriptions and packs in their store. I’d legitimately love to see the story to its conclusion, but I just don’t think I have the patience, persistence, and fortitude to do so.
It was beyond unusual to get a continuous stream of Sonic mobile game guest appearances, but I predominantly have three takeaways:
First, the best crossovers are the ones that are just completely nonsensical and provoke the strongest dissonance possible.
Second, trying to grapple with three Japanese/Korean gacha RPGs across three months is both expensive and spiritually draining.
And finally, Puyo Puyo Quest currently has somewhere in the realm of 2500 characters and character variants, and many of them are deeply upsetting. The Sonic event from a previous year returned, and I got Ringo cosplaying as Shadow. The game is a worse version of Puzzle and Dragon. I’m ending this article with a picture of Arle dressed as Eva Unit 001:
Happy New Year, I guess?
SEGA says quality beats discounts with Frontiers.
Continue reading Sonic Frontiers Was Once a 2021 Title, and Other Investor Q&A RevelationsGreen Hill Zone, one brick at a time.
Continue reading LEGO Ideas Sonic Set Officially Confirmed, Releases JanuaryBetter than Sonic Christmas Blast.
Continue reading Spend Your Holiday with this Sonic Movie Yule Log VideoEarlier this year, LEGO and SEGA officially revealed that Toastergrl’s Sonic Mania-themed LEGO Ideas set had been approved for production. Now, a number of Twitter accounts are posting leaked images of what is believed to be the final version of the set:
You probably noticed right away that the design has changed a fair bit from what was originally pitched on LEGO Ideas:
It’s quite common for a set to go through significant revisions between the Ideas version and the final released version. Often times, it is to follow the license holder’s suggestions or requirements, to fit within what is reasonable for LEGO to manufacture, or to ensure the design can be made and sold at a reasonable price. The LEGO Ideas Sesame Street set is a good example of this:
In the case of the Sonic Mania set, the most immediate difference is that it has dropped the Sonic Mania connection in favor of more generalized Sonic 1 branding, however it looks like several other tangible designs have been changed:
What hasn’t changed is that the set still appears to be modular, per the pins sticking out on the right side. While LEGO very rarely expands Ideas sets into full-blown themes, the ability to connect it to other sets does seem to suggest they may have further plans for Sonic. There’s no indication on the box that this set in itself breaks apart into level chunks.
Further stoking the speculation, rumors have surfaced this year that LEGO may be launching special “Gaming” branding for certain themes, such as their Overwatch line or the recently leaked Horizon: Zero Dawn Tallneck. They also continue to update their Minecraft and Super Mario themes, with new sets of each planned for early next year.
Thanks to many submitters, but particularly VisionaryofSUPER on our Discord News Tips channel.
Did you know BioWare’s DS Sonic RPG, Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, was originally meant to have an intro animation? I sure didn’t! Well, it did, and that intro animation has now been released by video game animation expert and author Jonathan Cooper. Check it out in his tweet below:
According to Cooper, SEGA cut the animation from the final release, leading to the compilation of game play footage for intro used in the final game. Cooper’s account has some other footage related to Sonic Chronicles, including pencil tests of the intro and in-game animation. We’ve got tweets containing those videos below:
Thanks goes to Discord user visionaryofSuper, who let us know about this!
![Which Sonic Games Are Compatible with the Steam Deck (So Far) [UPDATED Feb. 23]](https://old.sonicstadium.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Steam-Deck-895x375.jpg)
