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Monday, January 4, 2021
Monday, September 14, 2020
GIANT JAPANESE SONIC STATUE BEAUTIFULLY RESTORED BY OWNER’S BEREAVED FAMILY
Remember the (now solved) mystery of the Japanese Sonic the Hedgehog statue in the woods? Well, when we last saw it, the 2-metre tall piece was in a huge state of disrepair – but this week, the family of the man who owned it has given it a wonderful restoration that brings it back to its former glory.
According to Japanese news site Younet, the statue was owned by a chap called Ryoji Kodera who ran an amusement operations company in Osaka. Kodera had set it up as a landmark decorating the entrance to his villa many years ago, but sadly passed away around three years ago. This led the statue to become damaged after getting exposed to the elements.
If you remember, this is what the statue used to look like.
But, after news of the statue had spread throughout the fanbase – including many reports on the Sonic Stadium – Kodera’s family had realised that there was a lot of interest in the huge snowboarding Sonic effigy, so decided to repair the damage and give it a new lick of paint. The process took three days, and you can see the result below (via Twitter)
Photo by ゆうけん on Twitter
Photo by さがら on Twitter
As you can see, it looks absolutely stunning now! We’re so glad that someone was able to restore the statue to its former glory – not only can a wonderful piece of Sonic history be maintained, but no doubt the piece meant a lot to Kodera-san so it’s an incredibly kind gesture for his family to go through the trouble of mending it. Just goes to show that there’s still a lot of love for Sonic all over the world, 29 years later!
- Header image from Younet
IDW SONIC ISSUE 30 RETAILER INCENTIVE COVER BUILDS ON METAL VIRUS MONTAGE
Surprise! We thought we were done with special cover artwork for IDW Sonic #30. But today the issue’s ‘Retailer Incentive’ edition was revealed. Not only does it look amazing in its own right, but it builds on the last issue’s RI cover in a really cool way.
This striking cover was drawn up by Nathalie Fourdraine, and shows Super Sonic and Super Silver blasting Shadow, Tangle, Cream and others with a nice healing ray of… Superness. It’s the effect of cleaning the IDW Sonic world of the scourge of the Metal Virus, and as a result Issue 30’s RI cover connects with Issue 29’s to make a stunning montage!
Here’s a reminder of the solicitation’s story: “The Metal Virus Saga is over, but that doesn’t mean things are back to normal. As the world begins picking up the pieces, who will be missing? What villains will escape? And who will go back on their word?”
And if you’re curious, here are the alternative covers that we’ve already shared on the site. Stay tuned for more IDW Sonic news, right here on The Sonic Stadium!
SONIC TEAM, IT’S TIME TO BRING BACK THE CHAO GARDENS
When I was 18, it was in 2010 and I had yet to become a Sonic news writer. It was also the year that I got Sonic Adventure 2: Battle on the Gamecube. I wanted to get all the game’s emblems, only to learn that doing so meant that I had to go raise these little creatures that are called Chao, enter them in races and Karate tournaments, and get some emblems there. It didn’t take long before I discovered that raising these cute, adorable Chao is fun and addictive. Now, a decade later, I think it’s time that Sonic Team decided to bring that back.
My first ever opinion piece for Sonic Stadium is about a topic that has been discussed in the Sonic community for some time. Even in 2010, when I got to raise Chao for the first time, I remember seeing fans asking for Sonic Team to bring back the Chao Gardens. That fan demand has only gotten louder and more frequent since then, but there are two major differences.
The first is a growing community of Sonic modders. In 2011, Sonic Adventure DX arrived on Steam, and Sonic Adventure 2 Battle did the same the following year. It took a few years after their re-releases for modders to really dig into them, but since then, their modding communities have only been growing. And that growth has only been accelerating as time passed.
The second difference? SEGA themselves. They know. They’re very aware, especially in recent years, that fans want Chao Gardens back. In fact, all it takes for them to hear fans ask for Chao Gardens to return is for the Sonic PR team to make a Chao-related meme. Aaron Webber, before his promotion, has talked about it on streams in the past. And when they conducted a Twitter poll in 2018 on favorite features from Sonic games, 61.5% of the 80,500 voters picked the Chao Gardens.
Even Takashi Iizuka gets asked about the Chao often. In 2016, when asked why we don’t see Chao much anymore, he said that “Chao require very clean and pure water in order to survive, so you may not see them in a lot of places”. Iizuka had to confirm to IGN at E3 2017 that Sonic Forces specifically wouldn’t have Chao. And Iizuka has been asked about bringing Chao Gardens back. He even got to personally hear fans cheer loudly when Aaron Webber asked them at the 2016 Sonic SXSW panel if they should bring the Chao Gardens back.
Oh yeah, and did I mention that Sonic fans have wanted the return of Chao Gardens so bad that they did it themselves? Chao Resort Island’s last update released in March of this year. Meanwhile, Sonic Adventure 2 modders have been gradually bringing back all of the game’s unused Chao Garden stuff to make Chao World Extended. And there’s Chao Island, a fan site in the Sonic community dedicated to Chao that has been going for well over a decade, with arguably the most information you will ever find about Chao in one place.
So yeah, there’s a lot of fan demand for this. And I just can’t help but wonder why. Maybe they only want them to be a feature in Sonic Adventure games. Maybe it’s because they have to dedicate a portion of the developer team to Chao Gardens, as was the case in Sonic Adventure 2, and it would take too much work and resources in this day and age. Maybe they just don’t want to.
But there is hope. Iizuka has expressed interest in remaking Sonic Adventure. And the Chao, according to Iizuka in an interview last year, were his favorite playable character in Team Sonic Racing. Why? Because “it’s the first time they have been playable since Sonic Adventure 2, and personally I wanted them to show up as playable as well”. And that’s not even considering the massive fan demand that has been going on for years. And Sonic Team has had a history of considering fan feedback in their games. So it’s not like it will never happen. I think it’s possible.
So how could they do it? Remaking Sonic Adventure, if this is something Iizuka and Sonic Team really want to do, is one way. And, well, I suppose you could always go that Sonic Adventure 3 route. Better yet, just don’t have them be a Sonic Adventure-exclusive feature. It worked for the Sonic Advance games, after all. There’s even fan support for the Chao Gardens to be its own separate mobile game.
There’s definitely ways to go about doing it, it’s just Sonic Team has to, well, do it. There’s fan demand, a way to let the Sonic community know they’re listening. If it were to be a side-feature of a main Sonic game, like in the Adventure era, it adds plenty of replay-ability, something that some fans have felt has been lacking in Sonic games lately. And if they do a good quality job at it, it can sell a lot.
Despite the Adventure Chao Gardens being modded and tinkered with for years, not to mention the nearly two decades that have passed since the Chao Gardens were first introduced, there are still things we don’t know about certain aspects of raising Chao in the Adventure games. Even now, I’m still learning new things here and there about this side-feature. So, I can’t even begin to imagine how much depth that modern Chao Gardens would have. The thought of Chao Gardens running on the upcoming generation of consoles that are releasing this year, and how they’d look, it’s surreal to me.
Maybe I’m asking for too much. Sometimes, I think back to a decade ago, when I first raised Chao, and the experience was all so new to me. It still amazes me to this day how much fun and addicting it is to raise Chao. I still play Sonic Adventure 2 very often, even today, because of the Chao. But it’s not the brand new experience that it once was. I’m now a Chao-raising veteran, so there’s very little that surprises me anymore. And I’d love nothing more than for this new generation of Sonic fans and young kids to get to experience the joy of seeing their Chao grow up with them, just like I did so long ago. I really do think it’s time to bring back the Chao Gardens. I just hope that Sonic Team does too.
SONIC 2’S HIDDEN PALACE ZONE REDISCOVERED IN CANCELLED MEGA DRIVE PROTOTYPE ‘ASTROPEDE’
Former SEGA Technical Institute artist Craig Stitt has revealed that assets from Sonic the Hedgehog 2’s long lost Hidden Palace Zone were re-used in a prototype Mega Drive/Genesis game that was pitched to SEGA of America in the 1990s.
Stitt, who also made waves this week after unveiling another prototype for a doomed Sonic spinoff called Treasure Tails, also shared details of a late-generation 16-bit title originally called SEGApede (later renamed Astropede). The game was originally pitched to SEGA of America and then a playable demo was green-lit.
To help demonstrate the game’s quirky premise – you played as a robotic centipede with powers linked to its multiple pods; if you took damage, you’d lose a pod and the powers that came with it – Stitt said in an article published by SEGABits that elements from Sonic 2’s cut Hidden Palace Zone were used.
“After the original pitch to the executives at SEGA America, they gave us the go ahead to make a playable version. Myself and Ken Rose went to work.You might recognize the art as being from Sonic 2’s lost “Hidden Palace Zone”. I figured since it didn’t get used in Sonic 2 I might as well use it here and save a lot of time,” Stitt revealed.
“I also reworked the basic lattice in the art to create the art for the background in the first Astropede video I posted here. In that case, I reworked the art signiicantly, but if you look you can see the underlying nature of the pattern is the same. I also used the art from HPZ as the foundational art for Sonic Spinball’s Toxic Pools level. (clealy I really liked that little peice of artwork).” – Craig Stitt, former artist at SEGA Technical Institute.”
SEGABits also scooped a video of the prototype in action, a fascinating 12-minute tech demo that shows the game in action. And man, Craig wasn’t kidding about lifting the zone – you can even see the Master Emerald from the Sonic 2 prototype just sitting there!
According to follow-up tweets by SEGABits, Stitt intended for Astropede to be a part of the actual Sonic universe as well. Part of a design document was shared online that details the centipede protagonist, called Zip, as a robot of Dr. Robotnik’s design… “fighting to save a life by cleaning up and collecting ‘Chaos Dust’ that had infected a particular evil doctor.”
Watch the video, via our good pals at SEGABits, below.
And check out their original article here.
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