I finally got some loans approved, about $3000 worth, most of which is necessary for my last crop of academic expenses. Of
course it just figures that I'd stumble across
this. I don't really know
how rare or populous Samba 2000 machines are in the used arcade market, but either way, $2500 is a deal and a half. It kills
me that I may never have such an opportunity ever again, but somebody could walk up and offer to sell me a country for
$200, I'd still have to turn it down because I don't have $200. All I can do is ask that somebody with money please buy this
machine and have it properly preserved.
The Sonic Heroes page is basically finished. Big Smile has a copy of the Japanese strategy guide on the way, so we're just
kind of waiting for that so we can make sure the information is accurate and complete. That out of the way, I've finally
begun converting the glossary into the Sonic Encyclopedia. The Heroes museum page and the first entries in the encyclopedia
should be ready for the next update (whenever that may be). If you need something now, I've added a couple more tweaks to
the museum timeline, and have completely overhauled the cameos page. I should probably also
brush up the museum index page and the Sonic Café page before I begin undertaking the encyclopedia... --
Green Gibbon!
July 3, 2004
After over four years as a semi-autonomous subsidiary, during which time it produced a single good game, SONICTEAM Ltd is
once again just plain Sonic Team, under total control of Sega Corporation. The
website has been stripped down to the game pages and will presumably be closed
completely in the near future. There's a quiz contest to win some pins and the announcement of a music CD featuring various
Sonic Team songs from a live performance that took place on March 30 (this is the first I'd heard of it). The tag line is
"sayonara, Sonic Team; konnichiwa, Sonic Team," which suggests they'll continue using the "Sonic Team" name, though I
wonder, with the impending restructuring, how long the entity once known as AM8 will even last.
I got Sonic Advance 3, which is... well, it's a Sonic Advance game: slightly above mediocre, quite a far shot from good.
Here's my little review as posted in the forum a few days ago:
The biggest new complaint is that Sonic's acceleration is based on how many Rings he's holding. Apparently, this was also
true of Advance 2, but I never even noticed it there, and here it's painfully obvious. At the beginning of the stage, Sonic
controls like a wet sack of manure, and when you do finally collect enough Rings to embue him with some semblance of
maneuverability, he moves too fast, which makes platform jumping situations trickier than they should be. Perhaps I'm
old-fashioned, but I really prefer it when my character's maneuverability doesn't shift every time he takes damage.
The next big issue are the visuals. Goddamn, but this may well be the ugliest Sonic game ever, and that includes G Sonic. I
look at a stage like Toy Kingom and I start realizing that this series has lost something it's never going to get back. The
seizure-inducing graphics aren't made more bearable by the fact that everything's super sized. Much like Sonic & Tails on
the Game Gear, you can never see enough of your surroundings to be comfortable.
The pair system is, as expected, just a gimmick. Basically, your teammate gives you access to a unique move or two, but it's
not hard to decide who you should bring along: almost all the new moves are impractical and useless. All you have to do is
find the partner who gives your character the same moves he's always had. Or you can just team up with Cream who gives you
the ability to fling Cheese. (It's hard to imagine why anyone would want to pair up with Amy, who takes away your ability to
automatically spin when jumping.)
On the bright side, the horribly dysfunctional rolling bosses are gone. The new ones still manage to be too frustrating, but
the good news is you don't have to finish Act 2 every time you want to play them again, plus you only ever have to defeat
each one once. (There are only a couple of them I think I'd ever get the urge to fight again.) The new robot, Gmerl, is
totally redundant. Basically, you encounter him 4 or 5 times over the course of the game, and he's got the same basic, Mecha
Sonic-esque attacks every time, plus a new one. Either way, he can be trashed in two seconds flat if you're willing to lose
your Rings.
We're back to 3 Acts per Zone now, which is definitely a good thing, and there's even musical variations for each one, but I
wish there some visual differentiation as well. One of my favorite things about S&K is that things changed between Acts, so
you could tell you were still in the same Zone, but there was visual differentiation to keep it fresh. The level design, by
and large, is better than the previous two Advance games, but still suffers from poor object placement that results in alot
of cheap hits. The spike traps are out of control, now. It isn't clever design to place a set of spikes, as Squirrelknight
put it, "everywhere it makes sense to stand." Also, the early Zones are alright, but by the time you get to level 5 or so,
the possibility of falling to your doom makes you afraid to run at max speed. It's especially bad in Chaos Angel, which
otherwise would probably be the coolest, most appealing new stage in the game.
I am, however, extremely pleased to see the return of the various devices that littered the lands in Sonic 3. Each Zone has
a few unique speed or momentum-gaining contraptions, and it's usually pretty obvious just by looking at them how you're
supposed to use them. Kudos to Dimps for that, at least.
I haven't actually played any Special Stages yet, but I still think the "find the Chao" entrance system is the best idea
they've had since Sonic 3's "find the giant Rings." Like the puzzle mode in Sonic Pocket, it gives you reason to go back and
explore the stages, plus, since every Chao you find is saved permanently, it's significantly less frustrating than the 7
emblems bullshit of Advance 2. Frankly, I even like this better than the "have 50 Rings at the end of an Act" gig.
The hub areas between stages become a nuisance very quickly. It's easy to keep lives stock-piled by playing the dull mini
games accessible from these areas, but I would've rathered if your player count was simply recorded in your save data like it
used to be.
All in all, while I think there's alot to be said for losing the pin-point precision system employed by Advance 2, Advance 3
still lacks the depth and creativity of the 16-bit days. It isn't as out and out frustrating as its predecessor, but it
still just isn't a whole lot of fun, and I think three chances has been plenty enough to get it right.
I've made a few more adjustments to the museum timeline. I'm in the middle of summer classes while still working on my
senior project and struggling to fend off the furious assault of laziness, so that's why things are slow here. The Sonic
Heroes page is in progress, and immediately after that I'll start the Sonic Advance 3 page or begin the vaunted restructuring
of the glossary. Just for the record, grammatically atrocious hate mail isn't going to encourage me to update any faster.
-- Green Gibbon!
June 20, 2004
I stumbled across this rather unusual project, and thought I'd
made a discovery. So I posted the find in the forum and everyone's all like: "Yeah, jackweed, we've known about that for
years." I can't begin to imagine what else they've never bothered to tell me, but in case there's anyone else as far back on
the geek bus as I apparently am, there it is. It's a most impressive feat of unnecessary labor, and the photography isn't
half bad independent of the juxtaposed ReSaurus figures. I'm particularly impressed with that quite successful Amy cosplayer.
I suppose next I'll find out about some rabbit that balances taiyaki on its head.
Speaking of the new forum, it seems to have taken root quite well. As of now, we have nearly 120 registered members, a solid
30 or 40 of whom actively participate. We've already degenerated to topics about underwear laundering habits and the
biological classification of platypi. The most enlightening aspect is watching how quickly relevant topics degenerate into
mass insanity, so if nothing else, we've offered concrete evidence for chaos theory. Speaking of which, I've decided to
utilize the forum to revive the fabled weekly poll of GHZ lore. Please feel free to participate in our sociological
experiment.
Sonic Advance 3 was released in Japan a few days ago and has been out in the US since last month, but it's been sneaking
around cyberspace since February or something. I suppose I'll eventually have to play it, though I'm none too eager to sit
down with Dimps' latest serving of Sonic mediocrity. Toy Kingdom? Toy Kingdom?! I mean... Toy Kingdom?! Music
Plant was going too far, but now we've reached the point of no return. And I'm told that's not even the ugliest stage in the
game. How I long for the days of Spring Yard and Collision Chaos.
Big Smile discovered something interesting: although no official announcements have been made, it seems that Sonic Mega
Collection Plus and the PC version of Sonic Heroes have disappeared from Sega Japan's release list. Hm...
I've beefed up the museum timeline a bit. Now there's box art and screenshots, a few more
tidbits, and some incorrect dates have been shifted. There's still some vital info missing, mostly European release dates
and box art. For the Master System games in particular, all I have are the Latin American release dates as alleged by Sonic
Jam, but I'm pretty sure those box covers are of the European versions. I'm thinking about adding a "requests" section with
a bullet list of all the info that's missing from the site. That way if anyone has anything to contribute, it'll be easy to
glance and see what's missing. Hopefully we'll be able to fill in missing data more quickly that way, though it'll take me a
while to sift through the site and see exactly what we don't already have.
By the way, here's the full-size version of the logo sketch, if anyone wants a looksee.
-- Green Gibbon!
May 26, 2004
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, nobody could
tell me anything about it anymore.
The new message board went up quicker than expected, and is now ready for mass malice. Segaholic and I have been working
almost nonstop over the weekend to pull it together, but most of the credit should go to him both for providing the server
space and understanding the technical jargon associated with the thing. If you intend to use the new forum, please be sure
to stop and give him a hand job on the way in.
This is a shiny new board and we're going to be a bit stricter with stupidity, so please have a glance at the rules in the
FAQ before you do something that might piss somebody off. There are about a dozen moderators and they're all cranky. --
Green Gibbon!
May 21, 2004
I still remember my own seventh birthday quite vividly. The year was 1988, and the celebration took place at the local
aquatic club, which was the fashion among elementary students of the era. As was also the fashion, my intent was to invite
only those of the same gender to partake of the festivities, but my mother and grandmother, who were in charge of
coordinating the event, had no intention of throwing a stag party. I made a valiant effort to persuade them with arguments
about all the diseases girls were known to carry, but my reasonable objections fell on deaf ears. I knew I was going to be
the biggest doofus at the Our Mother of Peace elementary because I'd invited girls to my party, but I was powerless against
the matriarchal dictatorship. Of course the first guest to arrive the night of the party turned out to be Allison, my
biggest rival in the entire second grade. It would've been difficult to discern who was the official "smartest
student" in that class... the boys all backed me up while the womenfolk were on Allison's side. Either way, we were now up
against each other one-on-one, and she was wearing an obnoxious frilly French maid one-piece. I was expecting the worst, but
the first thing she commented on was the temperature of the water. I don't remember exactly how I responded, but I'm pretty
sure it was some kind of abysmal attempt at a retort which she ignored. Conversation went on like this for about 10 minutes
before the rest of the guests began arriving. A couple of my buddies pulled me aside and expressed amazement that Allison
and I hadn't torn each other to shreds, and I had to admit that I wasn't really sure how it happened, either. Either way,
the party turned out okay even with girls, and I got twice as many presents. The years went by, and I lost my "prodigy
student" status sometime around the sixth or seventh grade, never to regain it. The second grade was the last time I ever
saw Allison, but today I imagine she's in law school or has perhaps started her own business. I, meanwhile, am struggling to
procure my baccalaureate from a third-rate university in a 4-year program that will have taken me 5˝, I play too many
videogames, and my greatest accomplishment is this moronic Sonic the Hedgehog fansite. I have no idea what Allison is up to
these days, but I'm pretty sure she's won.
But it's not my seventh birthday, it's the GHZ's. There won't be any pool parties... ideally there would be French maids,
but it turns out there isn't enough in the budget. I have, however, managed to procure three exclusive interviews with three
of the most pivotal men in Sonic's history: Yuji Naka,
Takashi Iizuka, and Naoto Oshima.
Revelations abound.
So another E3 has come and gone, and though I couldn't afford to fly my broke ass to L.A. this year, it doesn't seem like I
missed much. When the stars of the show are a pair of handheld systems slightly less powerful than what's out now, both with
nothing to sport but remakes of games that already exist, it is a quiet year in gameland. The most potentially exciting
revelation was the announcement of Phantasy Star Universe. Apparently it's an MMO action RPG, which I guess technically
makes it Phantasy Star Online 2. Like I said last time, we've reached a point where it's difficult to get excited over
anything Sonic Team has on its agenda, but maybe this will finally be the return to form. Maybe. They still haven't shown
the actual game yet...
As a game-player, my interest in Sony's PSP is very minimal, though as an industry-watcher, I have to admit I think this is
going to be the first handheld console since the Game Gear that may be able to go up against the Game Boy dynasty. Of course
Sonic Team's plan is to slop Puyo Puyo Fever over onto the contraption, meaning this decent-at-best rendition of Compile's
15-year-old puzzle game will now have a reign of terror spanning 8 different consoles, which I believe may be a record.
Sonic, meanwhile, will be spinning his merry way onto the Nintendo DS. (There's also a tech demo featuring Sonic running in
a 3D tropical arena that I don't think is actually Sonic DS. At least, I prefer to think that it isn't.)
When I sat down to design this site seven years ago, I had nothing but a clearance "HTML for Dummies" book that was outdated
even when I bought it. I haven't really bothered to learn anything since then, and now there's all this SQL and PHP stuff
that you're supposed to have to run a professional-looking site. Of course I know nothing of any of it, but there are a few
guys here who do. Thanks to the tireless efforts of Brother Tsui, aka Segaholic2, resident chink champ of the Hill, the
notoriously elusive admins have been contacted and the GHZ finally has its own something-or-other SQL database. I have no
idea what that means, but apparently it's got something to do with PHP. I have no idea what that means either, but I'm told
by more competent GHZers that we'll be able to get a news script and possibly even an update script running. But the proud
warrior Tsui didn't stop there: he's also got a new message board in the works. This one's from PHPBB, meaning that the GHZ
will, at long last, have a real forum. The timing is most fortuitous, as it seems the
old message board we've been using for the past six
years or so has finally pooped out for good. The new one will hopefully be ready in a couple of weeks.
So, we can finally start making some big things happen around the site. The only thing that stands in our way at this point
is our own collective laziness. With that, I think I'll go take a nap. -- Green Gibbon!
May 12, 2004
Phantasy Star Universe? Aside from the new Zelda, this is the only E3
announcement so far that's made me raise an eyebrow. Is it, perhaps, a proper MMORPG? Phantasy Star 5? Or is it something
stupid like a bundle collection of all the old PS games? It's impossible to ignore the fact that Sonic Team have
disappointed consistently for the past three years, but in the darkest hour, maybe...
We here at the GHZ, incidentally, are all whores. -- Green Gibbon!
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