Refuge for Sonic freaks and outdated HTML since 1997

March 15, 2004
Alot of people have been asking about the status of the Sonic Battle page, so if you're one of those, I'd say it's about 80-90% complete. Some other people have been asking about the status of the glossary, so if you're one of those, you might be interested to know that it's going to be restructured from the ground up. Before I put up the prototype design that's on the site right now, we couldn't decide whether I should include every entry in one big list or if I should categorize. I opted to schlock everything together, but it's become apparent very quickly that that isn't going to work, so in the new design, entries are definitely going to be categorized. Or I'll probably include both, so you can just browse aimlessly through the whole honking thing or choose a specific area, like characters, locations, or whatever. For the time being, though, I've decided to stop accepting submissions. I thought taking outside help would make my life easier, but I'm just backlogged on entries to about December. If you've already submitted a synopsis and I decide to use it, you'll still be given credit, but until further notice, no new submissions will be accepted.

So PSO C.A.R.D. Revolution is out. I still haven't picked it up yet. I'd actually completely forgotten it was supposed to be released. I've fallen so far behind the PSO scene that I think I'm finally beyond the point of catching up. I'm not sure what's going to happen with the PSO section of the site, unless I can find someone who's willing to manage it. Whatever the case, as curious as I am to see how this whole Ragol story arc is resolved, I'm intimidated by the card thing. After years of curiosity, I've finally starting making small investigations into the card subculture, and all I can see is a mathematic fun house that scares the mortal shit out of me. Someone who requires 5 attempts to pass Math 105 has absolutely no business messing around with cards and dice. This could well be the first Sonic Team game I just don't play.

Speaking of Sonic Team games I have no desire to play, Astro Boy is supposed to be released in a few days in Japan. I have an ethical vendetta against licensed games for a variety of reasons (not all of which are entirely clear to me), and when I found out that Sonic Team was developing an Astro Boy game, I knew in my soul that we'd passed the point of no return. Still, I was gripping to that faint, dim hope that Astro Boy is almost like Mickey Mouse, a character so old and venerable he could hardly even qualify as a "license" anymore. According to all accounts, though, the game blows. To me, crappy licensed games are the absolute bane of the industry. There is nothing lower, nothing. That the once exalted Sonic Team is now stooping to the level of THQ and Bandai is the ultimate kick in the nuts. I've put up with the stream of mediocrity they've thrown in my face since PSO, but this is a betrayal that will not be soon forgiven.

The Sonic Heroes soundtrack was released a couple of weeks ago, which is good news because it was the best part of the game. Also, if I'm not mistaken, issue #134 of the Archie Sonic comic is supposed to be released this month. WB, our ever-beloved champion of chicken, makes his art debut in this issue. I haven't bought any Sonic comics in seven years, but I will own multiple copies of #134, and you should, too.

On a closing note, here's something interesting that Poison Eggroll brought to my attention. This was discovered in MegaGoat, a Mega Man spoof from TatsuSoft. The graphic artist is Tony Nguyen, who used to post at the forum under the name Cuckooguy. Who needs Häagen-Dazs when you can have GHZ? Available in 3 delicious flavors: Drano Cookie dough, Popcorn's mom, and butter pecan! -- Green Gibbon!

I just got Puyo Puyo Fever, long after I thought I'd purchased my last Dreamcast game. Like all Sonic Team games, you can toggle between Japanese and English text and voices, so it's completely accessible even to those of us whose Japanese vocabulary is mostly limited to dirty words. Still, even if the game were comprised of nothing but menacing kanji, all you'd need to know is how to play Puyo, and if you don't know that, you are in severe need of cultural refinement.

Fever plays just like every other Puyo ever made (all 40 of them). The Puyos are a whole lot jigglier than usual, and sometimes it can be difficult to maintain composure when your whole screen is wobbling around like jello on a jiggle-belt machine. In addition to the usual colored pairs of Puyos that drop, there are new clusters of 3 and sometimes 4. The clusters of 3 will be of 1 or 2 colors, forming a curve. The clusters of 4 will either be of 2 colors in a yin-yang shape or all the same color in a giant Puyo blob. The namesake new gimmick is the "Fever" mode. I'm not 100% sure how to activate it yet, I think it's initiated by getting enough chain reactions. When you or your opponent enters Fever mode, the music changes and your bin becomes temporarily replaced with a whole different stack of Puyos ideally set up for some heavy-duty combos. It becomes sort of like a twitch puzzle mode, as you have to quickly figure out how to squeeze the most combos out of the stack with the set of Puyos falling from above. When the timer on the Fever mode runs out, you return to your bin as you left it before the fever was initiated. The addition doesn't seem to detract much, but it doesn't really add a whole lot to the strategy, either. You're still basically just trying to link combos. The only thing that really bothers me are the visual indicators. Little colored dots mark the location at the bottom of the bin where the falling Puyos are about to land, and if a cluster of 4 or more can be made, the potential group begins flashing. Maybe on hard mode these aren't there, I haven't made it that far yet. Also, purple Puyo's don't show up at all until level 7 of the Hara-hara Course (the last course in the scenario mode).

I have the Japanese version, but it also includes credits for the European version. Nary a mention is made, however, of the land which God sheds his grace upon, so I guess SoA has no plans to release this here, the wretched Puyo nazis.

So Sonic Advance 3 has been unveiled, rather curiously, by THQ. Of course THQ has handled the Western distribution of almost all Sega's GBA games, but they don't usually make the announcement unless they've actually had a hand in development (cases which have invariably resulted in catastrophe). A quick glance at the legal jargon at the bottom of a few of their game pages seems to indicate that they are not, thankfully, taking part in the development of Advance 3. I'm not that much happier with Dimps, of course, but at least Dimps have proven capable of churning out respectable mediocrity as opposed to THQ's flawless record of garbage. Third-rate's better than fourth-rate no matter how you look at it. Still, I think this is the first Sonic announcement probably ever that didn't elicit even a tinge of excitement from my fanboy soul. Maybe I've finally come to grips with the fact that there will never be another good Sonic game ever, or at least until such time as I find myself in a position of creative control at Sonic Team, which, if it's ever destined to happen, won't be until we're all telling our grandkids about the "good old days" when Sonic games didn't suck. The night I read the announcement and looked at the first screenshots, though, I had a dream where I had to use partners to overcome simple obstacles. S'true.

Now, as promised, the results to January's "where the hell are you from" poll. Altogether there were 53 votes, the results of which I will assume are an accurate represenation of the hundreds and hundreds of adoring fans I know I have who were evidently too shy to vote:

• USA: 27
• Canada: 5
• UK: 14
• Australia: 1
• Other: 6

So I guess I was wrong, the numbers would indicate that my homeland has control of the Hill. The old world certainly held its own, but there were fewer Canadians than I expected. I guess those guys are just a whole lot louder, so they seem like more. Long-time GHZer Rlan was the sole representative of poor isolated Australia, and he still staunchly refuses to comment on his sexual identity with marsupials. As far as the "other" countries go, there were 2 from Mexico and 1 each from Italy, Argentina, and the Czech Republic. Cathal Comerford votes from Ireland which, in my mind, is the same thing as the UK, but he seems to strongly disagree with that so I'll humor him. Other points of interest: among the voters was Eric-Jon Waugh of Insert Credit, which is apparently a popular site that I only discovered a few months ago and fell immediately in love with when I discovered they cover porn games. Sam Bridgett humbles my trite grasp of English slang by appending "You sodding minge-sniffing gits" to his entry. Mike Robbins is an American who defends the metric system, but we should have tolerance for the mentally retarded so I won't say anything nasty about him. (Just kidding, Mike. As everyone knows, I'm never conscientious about making fun of retarded people.) John Peterson encourages me to keep up the careless use of obscenity in my writing, so in his honor, I've made a conscious effort not to swear at all this update. Joe Iuliucci (if I even spelled that right) asks an interesting question that I get every so often: since this is an American site, why do I refer to systems, characters, etc by their Japanese and sometimes European names? There's a really simple answer to that but I know I'll blow it out of proportion so I'll wait until next update to answer. In closing, I would like to point out that there was not a single vote from any Asian country, Africa, or Antarctica. You'd think there'd be some bored scientists down in Antarctica who are also Sonic fans. I mean what do they study all day, snow?

I finally decided to change my avatar because I figured people were getting tired of looking at Ataru Moroboshi's grinning mug. So now you all get to look at his gaping maw for a while. I thought about perhaps switching to Yotsuya-san from Maison Ikkoku, but I decided I'm probably still a bit young to be pulling off a successful Yotsuya. Eventually I'll be Happosai. It's very difficult for me to break away from Takahashi-isms. -- Green Gibbon!

Being a self-proclaimed Sonic historian, I like to think I know everything there is to know about the entire series. It's quite disconcerting, then, when I hear about a whole game I never knew existed. It's like discovering a 27th letter in the alphabet. The first time this happened was when I got Sonic Jam and saw Tails' Skypatrol. It happened again a couple years later when all this information on Sonic Patrol Car and Galaxy Patrol surfaced. And it just happened to me again today when Reala of Sonic Cult showed us video of Sonic Eraser. I did some research and it turns out that Sonic Eraser was only available in Sega's short-lived Mega Modem service circa 1991. It's a simple puzzle game that looks like a Columns/Puyo hybrid. The only Sonic connection are the sprites that seem to battle with each other in the 2-player game. I still think it's important because this would technically be the first Sonic spinoff ever, it's super obscure which makes it très chic, and they even went so far as to put Sonic's name in the title. I'd like to give it a museum page, but I need to play it first. Apparently it runs on Gens, so there must be a rom floating around somewhere (which is a surprise to me, as I didn't think it would even be possible to dump a Mega Modem game). My first-born daughter goes to the first person to help me find it.

It looks like Eraser will soon be offered through Sega's B-Club download service. More information about the game can be found here and here.

Here's a funny story that has nothing to do with Sonic. A couple years ago, I purchased a Mai Shiranui figure from Blue Box Toys. It's about 10" tall and is like a giant, extremely buxom Barbie doll with a separate cloth replica of Mai's famous red & white garment. I was a bit disappointed with the thing when it arrived, although it was difficult to pinpoint exactly what I didn't like about it. Plus it would never stand up on its own, so rather than display it, I put it back in its box and stuffed it in my closet. For two years I didn't touch it or think about it much, then the other day while slacking off from my studies, I was proudly surveying the vast collection of geek gold in my closet and my eyes happened across the forgotten figure. I studied it for a moment then finally realized what I hated about it: the head. The body was cool in an exaggerated anime kind of way, but the head was too small and didn't fit right on the neck. Assuming the figure had no collector's value, I pulled it out and promptly popped Mai's noggin off. Sure enough, the body looked ten times better without the offending appendage. But something else curious caught my attention. In the struggle to remove the Shiranui cranium, her torso had shifted a bit, revealing a belly button under her clothes. I was quite impressed that they'd have bothered to include that much detail on a part that was meant to be covered, and of course that roused my curiosity. Now, I had been tempted to do this before, but I figured it would be a fruitless search and I'd feel silly afterward. Quickly glancing around to make sure nobody was looking, I pulled Mai's loose-fitting garment aside to expose a breast. Sure as the sun rises, there was a perfectly molded plastic nipple. I don't mean just the tip, either, the whole pepperoni is upraised and colored a pretty pink. Needless to say, the figure immediately went from being that $20 mistake in my closet to my new favorite toy. The only problem is that now I've undressed and redressed her so many times, her clothes don't fit right anymore. (It's also interesting to note that in the second grade, I got in big trouble for swiping the bra off a girl's Barbie doll.)

Next update I'll post the results to the "where the hell are you from" poll. It's kind of interesting, if not really surprising. -- Green Gibbon!

Not a major update today, I just feel like typing. Some recent releases: Triple Threat, the Sonic Heroes vocal CD, is out. It's available at CD Japan. While it's shipping, you should have time to figure out how to set your CD player to skip the crappy songs (leaving you with "This Machine" and "What I'm Made Of"). Also, the PS2 version of Puyo Puyo Fever is scampering gleefully about the shelves of Japanese software retailers. I'm a big, gooey, sentimental pussy, so I'm waiting for the DC version, although I'm curious to hear any impressions. (I hate to say it, but if anyone can screw up Puyo, it would be Sonic Team.) Also, NCS is carrying the second series of Sonic X UFO catcher plushies, which is worth noting because it features, as far as I am aware, the first widely-available Eggman plush. While the fuzzy Doc is round and huggable, he does not, sadly, say "yosh!" when you squeeze him.

A couple of people have asked about the status of the glossary, as I haven't added anything in over a month. It's in the process of being upgraded to a sort of version 1.2, but first I want to get the Sonic Battle and Heroes museum pages up. It's a slow process... I've discovered that, even at a third-rate university, 400 level classes aren't to be trifled with. Next they'll have me presenting a 30-second animation in three different languages while standing on my shaven head, and I have to do it, 'cause I just want to get my damn BFA and move on with my life. Jumping through the hoops, that's all it is at this point...

SSSSCCCCHHHLLLUUUURRRRPPPYYYYY!!!!! Jesus God, what the hell was that?! -- Green Gibbon!

This page has been accessed 56441 times since 01/15/04. Since the site opened in May, 1997: too damn many. Send all complaints to Jared "Green Gibbon!" Matte. Hosting provided by Emulation Zone and Emulation World. They're your daddy.