So. Summer of Sonic.

[Tsuyoshi-kun]

I keep forgetting that Amy was once a cute, appealing character.

Those figures look awesome.

[Alexrd]

Free toy with every meal! This is way past cool. And happenin'.

Old-school design.

[Wombatwarlord777]

But whither the Eggmen?

In all honesty, those figurines are pretty neat.

[Arcade]

I like Amy and Metal Sonic, Super? I hate him, he is not the STC version that is evil...

[Malchik]

I like Amy and Metal Sonic, Super? I hate him, he is not the STC version that is evil...

Quiet, you. Sega and a majority of young purists are trying to forget that.

[Crowbar]

What? Evil Super Sonic was the most entertaining thing in StC.

[Locit]

So did people go to this or what.

[j-man]

It hasn't happened yet. Me and Crowbar are going to scope it out.

[Crowbar]

Yeah it's this coming Saturday.

Currently debating whether it's actually worth turning up early enough to beat the probably huge queue and get one of those figurines.

[j-man]

I think I'm getting there about half nine, quarter-to-ten sort of time. I really want one of those Metal Sonic figures.

You know what I look like, right? So we can hang out and cuddle, etc.

[Crowbar]

Assuming that's you in your avatar, yes. I shall endeavour to wear my brown classic Sonic the Hedgehog t-shirt there (if I can remember to wash it in time), so I should be easy to spot. If you're desperate, you can see a photo on the About page of my website.

Are we certain of the start time? It is nowhere on the website, and the only place I can find mentioning it is this source that is for some reason on Deviantart. I will try to get there around that time, or maybe sooner, since I want one of those things too and I'm paranoid about the size of the queue.

Oh christ, I just realised that Deviantart guy is Boltstryke. I have a history with him... I pray to god he doesn't recognise me at the event.

[j-man]

That is indeed me in my avatar. I'll probably be wearing a trilby and a glazed expression. Just PM-ing you the deets, son. Word.

[Crowbar]

So, I went to Summer of Sonic. Unfortunately I was unable to rendezvous with j-man. Either he didn't go or we just completely missed eachother. I saw a few people in trilby hats, but wasn't sure any of them looked like you, and none of them seemed to recognise me in my aforementioned t-shirt. I even asked from an announcement for you over the PA to no avail, but I fear that if you had come you may have just left by then. Oh well.

Upon entry I got a goody bag with one of the dinky Metal Sonic figures and some other stuff I don't care about.


It now sits with my other figures that each day remind me of where I'm headed in life, right above the manga that does the same (though actually I think most of the stuff pictured is pretty high-brow).


Once I entered the venue itself I was gripped by some sort of madness, and very quickly spent £24 on many copies of StC I could probably get on ebay for much less if I were patient. I got issue #1 (which I never read and is probably rubbish but that that I wanted for historic value), a couple of very late issues (which I also never read and are probably also a bit rubbish, judging by how weird Richard Elson's art is on the covers, but that I feel also hold some historic value) and whichever ones I saw that were from stories I liked (somebody else got the first issue of the "Running Wild" story, though, which made me jealous).

All this is nothing, however, compared to the £80 I spent on four original pages for the Knuckles comics by Nigel Dobbyn. I honestly wanted more. It's not like I couldn't afford it, and it would've been nice to get some pages from the Captain Plunder stories or "The Graveyard", but a couple of the issues I got had some of those, so I figured I should get what wasn't covered by them and went for pages from the Dr Zachary storyline and that one-off with the crab character.

All is pictured below (click for big).


Now, onto the more important things: Sonic 4 and Sonic Colours. I only got one brief go on each because the queues were immense and I didn't want to have to hang around that long becuase I have a party to go to later, and it was also incredibly hot and smelly even by the standards of a convention. I didn't get to try the DS version of Sonic Colours at all. Here are my brief impressions:

Sonic 4: Sonic accelerates like a million bags of bricks, suggesting to me that Sonic Team took the cries for "momentum-based gameplay" (whoever's fault that buzz-phrase was) too much to heart without actually putting thought into the concept. His slow acceleration is drastically at odds with the presence of the jump dash, which accelerates you to high speed instantly, and this is also at odds with the level design, which seems to aim to trick and frustrate you more than I felt either of the Rush games ever did. You may not have liked either the level design or the controls of Rush and Rush Adventure, but they were at least designed with eachother in mind, since the boost made you invincible so you wouldn't just run into an enemy you couldn't possibly react to. This happened alot in what I played of Sonic 4.

The homing attack, as I think everybody already suspects, is a piss-poor addition. As well as meaning the inclusion of the aforementioned jump-dash, it trasmits you almost automatically through large parts of levels, and other parts that are actually completely automatic due to sequences of springs. This really annoyed me: it was mostly used in the 3D games to transition between sections of levels, and felt like a seperate element, but in what I played of Sonic 4 it was just a near constant feature of the levels themselves. You can't move for springs and boosters. Why can't we have the old-fashioned springs back, that actually provide momentum rather than just shooting you in the direction they're pointing?

The jump physics are also floaty, and this coupled with the ultra-slow acceleration makes even simple platform hopping far more annoying than it should be. Sonic's normal top speed is too high considering the slow acceleration and, again, the level design. Also I was pissed off when I tried to do a loop-jump (you know, where you jump downwards on the last curve of a loop for a speed-boost) and Sonic stopped dead. Even worse, it worked the second time I tried, so the physics are not just bad but also inconsistent!

Sonic Colours: Actually not bad. There were one or two "beat all enemies to proceed" bits in the levels available, but they consisted of about four enemies apiece so they weren't too offensive. Controls for the 3D sections didn't feel too bad, though there seems to be a difference between the free-roaming segments, and the "straight-ahead" segments, since in the latter Sonic handles in a much more heavy fashion and is bound into moving forward. Perhaps this is influenced by Sonic 06's high-speed segments. However, the transitions never felt overly jarring, and the controls themselves in both were decent. Better than Heroes and Shadow, for sure. The 2D segments had more automatic segments than I'd like, but they felt somewhat segregated from the actual playable sections, which renders them less offensive to me than they were in Sonic 4. They also, crucially, never felt like they were encouraging you to go fast in parts where you shouldn't (due to the possibility of running into enemies), something Sonic 4 suffered from alot. The controls in those certainly weren't any more like the classic controls than Sonic 4's were, but they weren't terrible.

I also saw and played one of the bosses, which takes place inside a big circle (vertically oriented, since it's 2D, and you can run around the whole circle like a big loop-the-loop) with platforms revolving around the boss's eye (and weak point) in the centre. It attacks mostly by grasping with its big clawed hands at the outer circle. The fight was rather too brief (3 hits, and not very many attacks from the boss) but it was a fun concept and shows promise for other bosses in the game.

I am aware that I may be being a bit easier on Colours than 4 because it never promised so much. However, I did feel it was honestly the more enjoyable game. It simply didn't frustrate or annoy me like Sonic 4 did.

So, basically, Sonic 4 is shitty, Sonic Colours won't really save the franchise but should be alright.

[Dr. BUGMAN]

So you didn't get a choice in the figurine? That makes sense, since I'm sure some characters are bigger draws than others ('though I don't think Metal would be the biggest). But I imagine the sight of two slovenly geeks passive-aggressively fighting over an Amy doll would've been worth more than any bit of swag itself.

pretty much what I expected from the games, too.

[Crowbar]

I was under the impression every visitor was getting a Metal Sonic toy (while stocks lasted).

Also, please do bear in mind that these were impressions from just, like, one level of each. And I cannot fully compensate for personal biases (I enjoyed SR and SRA, for example, since I spent alot of time doing time attack competition on them at the Sonic Center, which they were very well designed for).

There are lots of other tidbits I really want to write about, but I have to go. You'll get them tomorrow, maybe.

[Crisis]

Those original pages are sweeeeeeet. I kinda wish I had gone now (not that I would have had a choice, as it turns out).

[Malchik]

I couldn't make it. I was supposed to meet up with one of my gal-pals from this forum, but ah..., you know, that troll Delphine tricked my again . I think I'll buy one of those figurines from ebay, but... sigh, my autism check doesn't come in till the end of the month.

[j-man]

Dude, I was totally there! I stood outside Shepherd's Bush for 20 minutes with a sign saying DRANO, but I didn't see you. There was a few guys in there with your shirt, and likewise I didn't want to approach anybody, mostly because I was absolutely fucking terrified of the place. Too many nerds. So much sweat. I didn't hear your announcement, dude. I must've already been at the pub.

So, the day.

Sonic 4 was a bit shit; see Crowbar's reasoning. Met Frozen Nitrogen from Retro, he seemed like a nice guy. Didn't get to play Sonic Colours because the queue was absolutely disgusting, and the only time it abated was when the console broke. I saw Aaron Webber knocking about by himself at the back, taking everything in. He was probably as scared as I was, if not more. I wanted to say hello, but I figured then I'd just be part of the problem. Because me and my mate kept dashing outside to the pub for a pint and some fresh air, I only met Nigel Dobbyn when he was already leaving to catch his train, but I shook his hand and told him his artwork was beautiful. He'd already packed up so I didn't get to buy anything. ffffffffffffff

Cosplay contest was hilarious; that Ulala was so fucking hot. Crush 40 were a bit of fun; the kids loved it, but I was wondering where the bass and drums were. Had a bit of a sing-a-long with Open Your Heart, which made me happy until I noticed all the basement-dwellers flinging themselves all over the place and I just wanted to go home. Maybe it was the hour and a half of sleep I got the night before, but I couldn't escape that niggling feeling of disappointment that was vying for my attention; that maybe, just maybe, this event was not made for the likes of me, but for those hyperactive, pre-teen, socially-retarded denizens of the internet that were whirling about to videogame theme songs. I felt old then, old as the stars, and so very, very tired.

Went to the pub with my mate, got absolutely shitfaced and told bad jokes for the rest of the night. Missed my last train and had to share a taxi with total strangers for the next hour; head down so we didn't get arrested for having four in the back, with my face in someone's crotch and a knee in my kidney. It was all very odd.

I'm going again next year.

[Crowbar]

Fuuuck, really? I saw no sign! I walked right in front of the most likely candidate for you I saw but to no avail. It occurs to me, however, that we may have been at different Shepherd's Bush stations! I was at the Central line one, were you at the Overground one accross the road or something? Oh well.

I was also scared at one point, as I was waiting outside the station, and saw increasing numbers of very obvious fat disgusting nerds, and also many children with their parents. While waiting in the queue I just felt a dull rage and resentment After a certain period inside, though (especially after spending all my money) I felt better. I didn't stick around for Crush 40's actual playing, but I did see the interview with Jun and the other guy while walking around trying to find somebody to ask if they had any bin liners or something for me to wrap my artwork in to protect them from the rain (I ended up just using my jumper).

Did you see that display case to the right? They had a bunch of stuff in there, but by far the most interesting was the old Corocoro Sonic mangas! I was seriously frothing at the mouth that they weren't for sale or something, I should have just smashed the damn case and legged it with them. Would've been totally worth it.

I was rooting for Big in the cosplay contest, by the way.

Another thing that made me happy: they had Sonic music playing the whole time, which mostly ranged from good to okay (rather too many remixes of Adventure-onward tracks for my liking), but I was very happy when they played Sonic - You Can Do Anything mixed with Sonic 2 8-bit's Green Hills Zone theme (like in this video only with an extra kick drum and overal better and longer).

On a final note, I half expected to wake up this morning, look at the Dobbyn artwork I bought, and find myself wishing I hadn't bothered. Instead, I really, sincerely wish I had bought at least twice as many. FUCK.

[Crowbar]

Also that guy who sang Super Sonic Racing in the karaoke contest was actually really good.

[Dr. BUGMAN]

brb gonna be cool at a sonic-con.

[Crowbar]

What are you talking about?

Nobody who posts on here can ever be cool.

[gr4yJ4Y]

Ever.

[Kogen]

I was looking through the photos and found these two charming people.



Anyone there experience them?

[Crisis]

Hahaha, eccentric-looking people enjoying themselves.