Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon gets 'woke' in new episode
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 30TH ANNIVERSARY MERCHANDISE SHOWCASED
A wealth of Sonic the Hedgehog products, due for release this year to mark the Hedgehog’s 30th birthday were announced today via the Sonic Central stream.
JAKKS Pacific Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Eggman Robot playset
Recreate the final moments of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 in this classic showdown between hog and machine, with Sonic, catapult, and damage-able Eggman mech!
Sonic the Hedgehog jewelry collaboration with King Ice
Styled towards a “Hip Hop” look, the kings of bling King Ice will be making these jewel-encrusted Sonic necklaces available for thosse who really want to look the part.
30th Anniversary Silver and Gold Commemorative Coins from APMEX
Sonic fans wanting to flash their cash will be able to this Summer with these Gold and Silver commemorative coins, created by precious metal perveyors APMEX. Those wanting a real high-end centrepiece in their collection need look no further!
HIT THE GYM, “THE EMERALD CLUB” CLOTHING COLLECTION IS NOW AVAILABLE ON ZAVVI
If you’re looking to 90s up your wardrobe, UK pop culture retailer Zavvi has a new line of Sonic athletic designs.
While US shoppers can now get official Tangle and Whisper merch, UK fans have gone retro with this line of shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies, and gym accessories. “The Emerald Club” line uses old-school patterns and a blue and red color scheme for some stylish designs.
Leading the set is a new pair of limited edition Akedo high tops, featuring the Sonic 30th’s Anniversary logo, with a… teaser attached? I guess shoes can get a teaser now? Anyhow, they’re £49.99.
To top it off, Zavvi is offering a limited time promotion, throwing in a gym towel for free if you purchase two items from the line.
WHAT COULD SEGA ANNOUNCE AT SONIC’S 30TH ANNIVERSARY LIVESTREAM EVENT?
Finally. We’ve all waited nearly six months for a morsel of information on what SEGA may be planning to celebrate Sonic the Hedgehog’s 30th Anniversary. For a character best known for his lightning-fast speed, updates have been almost-controversially slow. But yesterday, SEGA revealed a special livestream taking place on May 27th focusing on Sonic announcements and news. So, what could they have lined up?
Well, lucky for all of us, we at The Sonic Stadium have done the hard work pulling our intel together on this, and have put our thinking caps on (which was significantly harder work) to outline the possible outcomes here. Give the below a good read-through, and let us know in the comments box below (or on the SSMB Forums) what your thoughts are. One thing we can be sure of – tomorrow’s show is going to be a great one.
Sonic Colours Ultimate
Yes, this is definitely a thing. It’s been the worst-kept secret of the last month or so (at least we were subtle about it – that hero image was more than a style choice), but we can say that Sonic Colours is getting a remaster of some sort, under the name ‘Sonic Colours Ultimate’. The original game was released in 2010 on the Wii, ELEVEN YEARS AGO, and is still fondly remembered to this day as a fun, fresh and well-executed adventure for the blue blur (if a little cheesy in the story department). So a remaster is most welcome.
If you’re wondering whether this remaster’s announcement will reduce the chances of a mainline Sonic game being revealed, don’t worry too much about it. Development work on Sonic Colours Ultimate would have likely ended a while ago – the game was originally due to be announced this time last year, but we imagine the COVID-19 pandemic delayed a lot of things logistically. So if anything, treat this incoming announcement as a nice bonus at this point.
New Sonic Collection
We expected some form of next-gen console-compatible Sonic collection might be announced in time for Sonic’s 30th Anniversary – it’s a pretty safe bet. Franchise reaches a milestone, release a package featuring a number of games from its classic archive. Everyone’s a winner. The last Sonic-focused compilations that SEGA released on home consoles were, in fact, Sonic Gems Collection and Sonic Mega Collection back in the mid-2000s – so there’s a whole new generation of gamers for which a modern collection would appeal to.
But this isn’t just us guessing about here. Not only does it just make sense, but a retailer listing leaked the existence of a new compilation heading to PS4, at the very least (we would expect this collection to eventually release on Switch, Xbox and maybe PC as well though, so don’t panic about exclusivity just yet). No doubt this will be unveiled in full during tomorrow’s Sonic Central livestream.
The only question here would be which games could be included in such a package. The traditional SEGA playbook with retro collections is to focus on the Mega Drive/Genesis classics, and we can see this new collection absolutely including the 16-bit Sonic titles (potentially with a reworked Sonic 3 & Knuckles, assuming the company manages to get around the issue surrounding the game’s soundtrack).
But we would love to see the addition of the 8-bit titles too – both the Game Gear and Master System versions of Sonic 1, Sonic 2, Sonic Chaos, Sonic Spinball and Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine would be fantastic, as there are small graphical and gameplay differences between the console and handheld versions that die-hard fans would appreciate. Chuck in the Game Gear-exclusive titles like Triple Trouble, Drift and Tails Adventure and you’ve got yourself a nice base for a package, assuming the presentation is up to snuff (Sonic Jam on SEGA Saturn, with its 3D Sonic World hub, remains the gold standard here).
It would perhaps be too much to ask for more than the 8-bit and 16-bit classics in an affordable package, with perhaps the exception of spinoffs like Sonic the Fighters, Sonic R, Sonic CD and Knuckles’ Chaotix. As much as we’d love to see a collection including everything up to Sonic Heroes, we suspect that SEGA might want to break off the Dreamcast era games into its own collection. Unless… SEGA totally flip-reverses on us and this entire collection IS focused solely on Dreamcast-era games. We guess time will tell on that one.
New Sonic the Hedgehog Title
We should be clear here. With Sonic Colours Ultimate and the new Sonic Collection lined up, it’s probably unlikely we will get a full blowout reveal of the next mainline Sonic the Hedgehog game. But we reckon there’s a good chance that a teaser of some kind will be held back as a ‘one last thing’ at the very end of the stream.
For one thing, SEGA’s 30th Anniversary ‘Unstoppable’ trailer includes a montage of Sonic games at the end, and fans have already noticed this small segment which doesn’t seem to match up with any previously-released Sonic game:
Now, this could just be a red herring – we all know SEGA’s Sonic Pillar loves to throw those around – and may be a shot of a remastered Sonic Colours (the location seems to line up with Planet Wisp, and the model of Sonic used here connects as well). But the fact that Sonic’s upper half is obscured here could mean this is part of something new. Could it be a new Sonic title after all?
Whether the above clip forms part of a new mainline title or the reveal of Sonic Colours Ultimate, we do think SEGA will in fact have some kind of tease planned for the next game. Bearing in mind that it has been nearly four years since the release of Sonic Forces, we’re due an update of this kind and will be more surprised if we don’t see anything on Sonic’s next adventure. Whatever happens, we will likely all be extremely excited by what they will show.
