News

... will be Wednesday, 8:00PM EST, October 4, 2000. I'll be online for at least an hour, staying longer if it's anything like it was last time.

To avoid confusion and give everyone a chance to get their questions answered, I may ask everyone to refrain from chatting with others during the session. I only say this because many people were having trouble keeping up with the flow of the conversation as a result of the extra chatter.

Please keep in mind that anything connected with this website is a work in progress, and while Bob and I do work hard to try to improve things overall, we're not quite there yet. We ask for your patience and consideration to others. Thanks.

There you have it. I'll be there - what about you?

Source: Ken Penders' Message Board

If you still don't own a copy of Sonic Adventure, you can get one for 20 bucks from Mplayer.com as a special offer to its members. I'm not sure if you have to be a member or not, but it's there and only $20 (US dollars) from the List Price of $57.99! Here's the URL:
http://store.mplayer.com/...
Source: Mplayer Store Newsletter

That's what the biggest rumor to come down the pike in ages is saying. This comes from SegaWeb...

Holy just so wacky it might be true, Batman! A rumor has surfaced indicating Sega is teaming up with none other than Nintendo to create a new cross-platform game. Featuring characters like Sonic, Mario, Link, Virtua Fighter Kids, and more in an RPG-style outing, the game will see release on both the Dreamcast and GameCube. The game (tentatively titled "Sega and Nintendo: The Cosmo Cube") is supposed to be officially announced in November. Ah, so that's when Hell is going to freeze over. Thanks to The Magic Box for the scoop.

Remember folks, and take THIS to heart; THIS IS IS JUST A RUMOR! It may or may not be true, but it's certainly very intriguing, is it not.....

Credit: SegaWeb News Bytes

With a little hunting around with help from Sonique, I've found the address so all you SatAM fans can also email Teletoon Canada. (the Canadian equivelant of the Cartoon Network) These guys air Sonic Underground and many other "niche" shows, so there is a possibility of them airing SatAM. Without furthur ado, here's the address:

BCE Place
181 Bay Street
P. O. Box 787
Toronto, Ontario
M5J 2T3

Increadible news for SatAM fans. We heard DiC was bought, well it was DiC who bought their independence. YOU MUST WRITE LETTERS TO CARTOON NETWORK NOW! Cartoon Network would be the best because they adopt series and above all they listen to their fans. They listened to the Sailor Moon petition so the SatAM petition could work. Okay, here's what to do. Here's what WB said:

Write to CartoonNetwork AND Dic. For CartoonNetwork you need to give them reasons as to why this series is so good and show them how many people are behind it. For Dic you need to convince them the benfits of airing it again, new episode possibilities (think of interest in Sonic Adventure 2, study demographics) and why Cartoon network would be a good place

DO NOT ASK FOR NEW EPISODES YET!! That will come in time and I'll keep everyone posted. Here's the addy to cartoon Network:

Cartoon Network
1050 Techwood Drive
Atlanta, GA 30318

And for DiC:

DiC Entertainment
303 North Glenoaks Blvd,
Burbank CA 91502 (USA)

Phone #: (818) 955-5400
Fax #: (818) 955-5696
Executives:
Andy Hayward: President & Cheif Executive officer
Patricia Ryan: President of international sales
Joy Tahjian: President of worldwide merchandising
Robby London: Senior Vice President of creative affairs

Two new games have been added to Sega's All Stars program. Capcom has announced that both Power Stone and Marvel vs. Capcom will now be repackaged and sold for a measly $19.95. Woo-hoo! Now you have absolutely no excuse for never having played these games. Check out our review archive for the scoop on both of them and then get off your butt and go buy 'em already! Sheesh!

Good news for Dreamcast fans.

Credit: SegaWeb News Bytes

For those of you who know, I recently sent out the SatAM Petition to quite a lot of compainies. Here's the bad news from ABC:

Thank you for your submission to American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. However, worthwhile, we cannot assume any obligation for ideas contained in your unsolicited submission. In an effort to avoid misunderstandings over the orginazaion or story ideas, it is our policy not to accept or review any ideas, suggestions or creative matericals not solicited by us.

As a nation orginization, we recieve a great number of program suggestions, many of which have similar plots, story lines, formats, and/or ideas to those created internally and/or already incorportated in other programs .(not a misprint, that's how it was written)

Accordingly, enclosed please find your unexamined submission. We thank you for your interest and wish you all the best in your pursuits.

Sincerely

Some ABC Jerk....
Anyway, if they'd payed attention, they'd see I was more so asking for them to rerun the series, rather than make a new one. Then, eventually, maybe a new series or season. Anyway, this is gonna be harder than I thought, but hell if I give up. I will not give up and just hope others are writing letters and having more luck. If Ben Hurst is right, the new president of ABC doesn't give a damn about ABC, so I suggest writing elsewhere.

Good evening friends, Tristan here. In today's report, Peter Moore testifies before Congress, a Genesis/Sega CD hybrid called the WonderMega hits EBay, and something that has hit home for all of us here at Sonic HQ brings a wonderful turn of events.

For those who ordered the Sonic Adventure wallscrolls when they "came out" last month, you may have noticed that Express.com never got the wallscrolls on time. Well, I got an e-mail the other day from them, and all Sonic Adventure wallscrolls are ready for shipping!

Okay, so you people will stop emailing me, I asked for Sonicpandemonium account to be removed because everything is now at Shadow of Light. A few hoax pages may be missing, and I'm sorry as I wasn't aware that they all weren't on SOL. You can resend them to Trez if you wish. But that's it, it's done, no more emails.

BTW, we still have a lot of uncut SatAM episodes for those looking.

I would KILL for that Sonic T-Shirt...

In fact - I would kill for over half the items I'm about to show you guys from something I found called "The Sonic Fashion Project". While searching through my translator some more, I've found some pretty awesome pictures of various items and merchandise within the Sonic store in Nagoya Japan. Clothing, plushies, jackets, giftboxes. The AMOUNT of stuff on the page is AMAZING. I never knew Sonic Teams page went into all this stuff. And I know I'd go practically BROKE in this store in Nagoya. See for yourself - :)

Believe it or not - Gamecube was the name that was supposed to have been Dreamcast! ;)

Yuji Naka posts a column to Sonic Team's web page every now and then (see previous and below articles), and the latest entry contains an interesting revelation. Apparently, when Sega was deciding upon the name for its new 128-bit console, Sonic Team looked at the shape of the system and suggested "G-Cube." If Sega had taken Sonic Team's advice, we may just have ended up with the Sega G-Cube instead of the Sega Dreamcast. Hmm… perhaps Nintendo would have then opted to release the Nintendo Dreamcast?

Source: IGN DC

Yuki Naka has put some interesting material on the Sonic Team website. ^_^ One of which is new pictures of the Sonic Store in Nagoya, Japan. :)

I've managed to find a way to translate some of the stuff he has on the page. (Yes, I've found a way to reliably translate some Japanese now. YAY! ^__^) And one of the other entries from his "web diary" (see article above) talks about the recording session for Sonic Adventure 2. One of things said is that a new character has been confirmed! ^__^ He talks about something that was called a "Volume of Post Recording" on Sonic Adventure 2. The translation is a bit wacky in areas and _VERY_ hard to follow (I believe its due to errors in grammar during translation), but here's what it got translated to:

[It] had gone to the studio of a Touhoku new company in Akasaka for the audition of a new character etc. of 'Sonic adventure 2'on this day. It is anxious because [it] thinks as going, and it is not done to SCE separately that it is bad whenever the studio in this Akasaka is in the vicinity of SCE whenever [it] goes. (^_^;) Video production for the Tokyo game show of '(*fantashestaronrain*)'was the vicinity of SCE. ‚?‚?‚?‚?‚?‚?‚?‚?‚? ?[ has been reconsidered in the studio because there was no audition recently.

I said the thing was wacky - I didn't say it was legible :P

Remember these pictures below? I've managed to get a lot of different stuff translated and its REALLY cool. ^^ One of the things (concerning an article that was posted a few months ago) was concerning the "Pokemon Train" where people were wondering why Mr. Naka had pictures of Pokemon on the ST website. It turns out that this entry of the diary was comparing Pokemon's train advertisements to the Sonic Adventure train advertisements before its launch. And he mentioned how the SA advertisement campaign was much smaller than how Pokemon is being advertised.

I'll be going through my translator pretty much half the day. So if I find anything interesting, I'll be sure to post it here! Later! ^___^

Source: Sonic Team

Sonic Team has updated thier website - and located on it are new wallpapers featuring the "Sonic The Skateboard" theme! ^__^ The picture is available in:

1280 x 1024:BMP file(1339KB)
800 x 600:BMP file(699KB)

Each file is available as a zip! ^_^

Source: Sonic Team

This has been posted on SUML, so listen up: Sonic the Movie comes on Starz October 1st at 3:35 P.M.

Source: Sonic Underground Mailing List

It's here, and it has SAGE coverage...in fact, most of the SHQ RA News this time around focuses on the expo. You can either stream it, or download it all. I'll be back Monday with a news update.

Well, folks, we have some Sonic E-Bay related auctions to pass your way, including yet another offer of all 26 eps of SatAM.

First up, here is an auction for Sonic 26.

Next, another auction here has Sonic 31 on sale.

To wrap up the comics, here is one for Sonic 24. The one selling all three of these ships worldwide, so don't let being outside of the US bother you here.

Here, we have all 26 eps of SatAM. This dude ships to US and Canada.

Finally, here, we have a book of how to Draw Sonic and company. Unfortunely, this person only ships to the US. :(

Well, there you have it for now, folks...

Thought I forgot - DIDNTCHA ^___^ !

Well the Poll Position is back for the New School Year, and for the month of September we open up with the results of our 3 previous polls! And the responses were EXCELLENT! ^__^ In June we polled you all with 3 questions concerning Sonic and Sega. We got some REALLY good response (most of which you can probably attest to them being up for so long). The questions are as follows:

Some serious news involving the whole piracy of Sega Dreamcast games has been brought up.

Sega is taking no prisoners this time, and has now officially shut down one of the largest Dreamcast sites out there that contains the most information on how to copy your own DC games and everything. The site? www.dcisos.com.

This site was totally into the whole "DC Scene," as the whole Dreamcast piracy business was called. This site explained on how to burn your own DC games, contained the files to make your Dreamcast work with copies. It also contained covers to the DC games for those that wanted their copies nice and neat. They even contained manuals in Adobe format, not to mention a forum where people could discuss things that were going well, or things that screwed up and warn people not to obtain certain things. All to keep the scene going.

Yet, since it didn't contain any files that illegally distributed any actual DC games, there was no way Sega could touch them, seeing as all they did was give out information. Apparently, something caught Sega's eyes and soon hacked down on their site, which will truly slow down the distribution, however, not by a long shot. There are other websites out there that focus on the whole DC Scene, basically replicas of DC ISOS, and this won't stop broadband users with CD Burner's from getting more games. In other news, last week, Kalisto, a major online distributor of the DC games released their latest, and final, DC game to the public, and with it, they had this to say:

"Sega has offered us stock options to stop releasing DC, so this will be it, our last release."

Sega had found a new piracy protection code for it all to end. Kalisto, however, found their way around it and ripped their last few games to the public.

Rumor's have it that Sega was devistated that no matter what, Kalisto would always get through the protection code, and it scared Sega. So, they offered them a way to "shut their mouths" and basically bribed them. Another rumor is that they were caught and arrested, and that they used that bit to cover up what really happened.

It seems Sega's finally gaining the upperhand on the piracy business, but with more groups showing up to distribute games online, there's no telling when it will all end. One thing's for sure, Sega's much more ordered than Sony when it comes to piracy.

S.A.G.E, The Sonic Ameture Game Expodition has opened today!

The S.A.G.E is to Sonic Fan Games as Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) is to Video Games. A whole heaps of online "booths" have been created by different teams of creators to show their stuff to the adoring public.

Sage will be taken place from the 9th (today) to the 11th of September, with new goodies popping up everyday!

Go now to Now!

Stop thinking and SCREAM !!! Ladies And gents - the Sega Scream that defined Sega in the early 90's is officially back! And with it comes a new commercial that features a guest stint of not only Tails, but E-102 Gamma as well! ^___^

Sega recently announced the introduction of a multi-million dollar advertising and marketing campaign to support the launch of Sega.com's much-anticipated SegaNet, the only high-speed online console gaming network providing Sega Dreamcast and PC users with the ultimate in speed, reliability and content. The campaign, which includes one 60-second TV spot and two 30-second spots, was created by Foote, Cone & Belding, San Francisco and includes animated footage from Pacific Data Images, the creators of the award-winning animated feature film, Antz. ^___^ To kick off the campaign, Sega debuted the commercials on September 7th during the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards.

The Play Online advertisement features the Sega characters whistling “America the Beautiful” while an announcer speaks about “whipping each other’s booty” using SegaNet. Kids are shown throwing their controllers around, screaming, tearing up teddy bears (no joke) and even blowing up their houses after competing in some fierce NFL2K1, NBA2K1, and Quake III. All this is highlighted by the Sega Scream, which is done in true oldschool Sega style. Those with VERY sharp eyes can pick up characters from Power Stone, Resident Evil, Fur Fighters, and Amigo from Sonic Teams Samba De Amigo - but most importantly Tails The Fox and E-102 Gamma From Sonic Adventure! Can you spot them in the picture above? ^__^

Download The Commercial: "Play Online!" - 25337K
Source: Dimension S And IGN

Haven't you ever wanted to spray graffiti all over your hometown?

Well - BESIDES the fact that you can get arrested for it, Sega is now letting us do it for thier videogames :) New Sonic Team graffiti designs have been made available for VMU download at the Jet Set Radio (aka "Jet Grind Radio") website! The designs include three Sonic logos, three PSO logos, and four Samba logos.

Happy Spraypainting! ^___^

Download Files from: Jet Set Sonic Downloads
Source: Neo Green Hill Zone