Major Japanese Sonic website updates (SGC extras details)

Recent happenings of pertinence to Sonic fans.
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big_smile
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Major Japanese Sonic website updates (SGC extras details)

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:FJ: Major Japanese Sonic website updates

Following the Sonic announcements at E3, Sega Japan have made a plethora of Sonic related updates to their online services.

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First up is the launch of Sonic Channel. This is the long awaited Japanese version of Sonic Central, but unlike the SoA website, the content has been supervised by Sonic Team.

Sonic Channel is much more comprehensive than its American counterpart and compromises of four key sections. The ‘Games’ area details all the Sonic games from the Sega Saturn era and beyond. Each profile contained within the section links to the websites Sega Japan originally produced for the game. The ‘Sonic Project’ page takes a regular investigation into the creation of the blue blur’s adventures, which at the moment features an interview with Masato Nakamura from Dreams Come True. ‘Community’ links to SoJ’s existing forums for both Adventure titles and Sonic Heroes.

The Fun Room sports a (somewhat meagre) selection of wallpapers to download. It also houses an oddly titled section called ‘Service Games’, which presumably contains demos for the Sonic PC releases, although, at the moment, this section does not function correctly.

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According to a SoJ press release, many updates are planned for the site in the future, so it is likely that these sections will be greatly expanded. Unfortunately, because the site is Flash based, most of the sections cannot be accessed with a translator.

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Like Sonic Gems Collection, Sonic Rush, also has been given an official website, although, in contrast to its console cousin, it only provides a paltry amount of information. It contains large-sized pictures of newcomer Blaze the Cat and 7 in-game screenshots, which can be viewed on a mock DS display. As with Sonic Channel, the site is entirely created in Flash. A fact page for the game can be found here.

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The next main update is the official unveiling of Shadow the Hedgehog, which, prior to E3, had only been announced in America and Europe. Its official website is also Flashed based and so the story and character information will be unreadable for most fans. It does, however, contain a selection of images, although most of these have been seen before.

Like Rush, the game also has fact page for X-Box, PS2 and Gamecube that thankfully doesn’t use Flash. Little new information exists within the page, although it does appear to name some of the game modes, but these do not translate well.

Sonic Gems Collection has also been given a fact page for PS2 and Gamecube. Much like the fact page for Sonic Mega Collection Plus, this page promises that the game will contains extras that will be a must for Sonic fans. However, it seems that Sonic Gems Collection will deliver on this promise, as, in addition to the artwork gallery revealed earlier, a sound museum is planned containing remixed tunes from classic Sonic games, together with a fact file section that details rare information about every title. These extras goodies are unlocked by clearing certain conditions.

Intriguingly, the page states that the ‘Mega Drive masterpiece is hidden and recorded’ and that co-operative and battle modes ‘are still a mystery’. Of course, this information, like everything else in this report, has been obtained via machine translation so may be partially inaccurate.
Last edited by big_smile on Wed May 18, 2005 7:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

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CM August
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Re: Major Japanese Sonic website updates

Post by CM August »

big_smile wrote:However, it seems that Sonic Gems Collection will deliver on this promise, as, in addition to the artwork gallery revealed earlier, a sound museum is planned containing remixed tunes from classic Sonic games, together with a fact file section that details rare information about every title. These extras goodies are unlocked by clearing certain conditions.
I like this bit.

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SegaSonic
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Post by SegaSonic »

Awesome...its nice to see More Sonic Stuff on their site.

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