They said it couldn’t be done. They said it was one stage too far…
But the Spiky Blue Hedgehog is about to finally star in in his first live action movie… created by the fans… For the fans…
OK – to get the “live action” element, they had to pool from the human characters and cities as seen in the SONIC ADVENTURE series (and you all know how I feel about those), but to be honest – if the movie turns out like this preview… I really don’t mind!
I particularly enjoyed the portrayal of Dr Robotnik…
More info on the video can be found below – go check them out:
The intention of making this film was for it to be a spec film, with the primary purpose being to show how a Sonic the Hedgehog film, in a live action environment, can be executed.
*This fan film has no association with Sega nor claims any ownership to the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. This is a fan film made solely for entertainment purposes without intentions of profit off the film.*
“Sonic” is a not-for-profit fan film based on the “Sonic the Heddgehog” video game franschise by Sega.
Produced by Blue Core Studios and directed by Eddie Lebron (the team that brought you the “MegaMan” fan film)!
All donations, no matter the size are very gratefully received – THANK YOU!
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Twitter: @GDsPodcast
We kick back and contemplate the apparent incoming apocalypse by discussing: The best place to build a Stronghold in the UK, The Queens speech is to now include basic Zombie attack survival tips, and we decide on our bucket list of films and games that we REALLY should have got round to experiencing.
News stories this week include:
*WAR-Z controversy escalates
*METAL GEAR 5 to run alongside MG Ground Zeros?
*STAR TREK the videogame confirmed for April 23
*Valve gives Plantronics licence to sell Aperture Laboratory headsets
*Capcom makes STREET FIGHTER X MEGAMAN free to download for Christmas
*NEO GEO X console has been released
*CITV to show weekend of classic kids TV shows in January
Here we are with a Retro review of one of my favourite ever single screen “clear-em-up” games…
Snow Bros (1990 – 1993)
Release and Formats: Arcade (Toplan – 1990) NES (Capcom – 1991) Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64/C64GS, GX4000 and ZX Spectrum (Ocean France – 1991, but were not released by the publisher Ocean Software) Sega Megadrive/Genesis (Tengen – 1993), The Amiga version was found in 2006, and the disk image has been distributed online.
History:Arcade Developer Toplan Released Snow Bros in 1990 to a widely positive reception. The game (gameplay here from the Megadrive version), alongside Rodland (also released in 1990), is in my opinion one of the best examples of the at the time very popular single screen, platform “clear em ups”.
What do I mean by “clear-em-ups”? Well if I say the words “1986” and “Bubble Bobble”, you will probably be instantly flooded with a wave of bubble popping nostalgia… and this game works by using a very similar game mechanic.
Gameplay: You play as walking Snowmen Nick and Tom (the game supports 2 players at the same time, much like it’s bubble popping cousin), who’s girlfriends have been kidnapped by a purple skinned David Bowie lookalike for some reason (why can’t these game heroes ever hold on to their partners), and it is now your job to get them back by fighting your way up each level of a tower until you reach the top.
To be honest, if you’re here for the plot – go play a recent JRPG, but if you’re here for frantic, snow chucking, trickshot creating mayhem… you’ve come to the right place!
The aim of the game is simple. You have to clear each enemy on screen as quickly as possible. If you take too long, an invincible evil pumpkin head…thing appears on the level and chases you until you kill all the enemies on screen.
You do this by throwing strangely psychedelic snow at them until they turn into a giant snowball that you can kick across the stage. The giant snowball rolls around, rebounding off walls and platforms, hopefully knocking out the other enemies on screen until smashing against the lower corner of the level. If the player manages to take out all of the enemies by kicking one snowball (this one snowball may be used to make others bounce around as well and increase the chances to pull this trick off), money in the form of large green dollar bills will fall from the sky. These disappear in a very short amount of time but are worth 10,000 points each, the most the player can get as a bonus.
If you don’t knock out all enemies at once, you will find that each enemy you knock out with a giant snowball will spin around the screen wildly before coming to rest on a random platform and leaving being a bonus pick up. Some bonuses are edible (sushi, cake, etc) and give points, some take the form of coloured lanterns that increase your powers until you get hit by another enemy.
There are four lantern power-ups: Red: Increases the speed of your character (faster running, jumping etc)
Yellow: Increases the distance of your shot
Blue: Increases the size/power of your shot, causing more “damage” and quicker snowball formation.
Green: Causes you to inflate and float round the screen, killing all enemies on your path. This is the rarest of the 4 power-ups.
Collect all three of the main power-ups together for the best chance of getting by on the later levels and also makes destroying the bosses easier.
Speaking of which, the bosses are relatively standard half screen sized fayre, but fun non the less. They include a giant jumping monster that spits very familiar looking “Spineys” (must have been Lakatu’s day off), and a giant brain/mush monster with “Ba-Bomb” cannons on his back (Are you watching Nintendo) 😉
Conclusion: All in all, this is a fantastic, frenetic diversion of a game with a great soundtrack and tons or re-playability. You can play a flash version of this these days, which is ported from the Amiga version of the game, but if you can find it, I would strongly recommend you play the Arcade original or the 16 bit console version.
Publisher: Codemasters Ltd. Year: 1995 (Re-released in 1998 with extra levels and level creator software).
Micro Machines 2: Turbo Tournament for me is THEseminal party/racing game and is still just as much fun to play now as in 1995.
These days with online play being so prominent, and the ability to play games with multiple people from all around the world at the same time being commonplace, it is very easy to forget the ‘olden days’ when the idea of more than 2 players at the same time was a distant fantasy, and we had to actually go round each others houses to play multiplayer… Physical social interaction people…it’s the way forward… 😉
Sure-we had Multi-taps, but the amount of games that supported them were few and far between-and then there was the actual cost of the peripheral itself, with was not much cheaper than some games at the time, and as a young teenager with hardly any expendable income due to the small sticking point of legally being unable to work on anything but a paper round, I knew which of the two things I would sooner buy.
But then this came along…
…and it changed the way me and my school friends socialized forever (at least until we were all tall enough to sneak into the local pub…)
MM2:TT for anyone who doesn’t know is a top-down arcade style racing game in which you are given control of a variety miniature cars, (including choppers, speedboats, racecars, tanks, jeeps, and formula 1 amongst others) while racing against either AI opponents or your friends on various locations such as kitchen desks, pool tables, workshops, school desks, gardens, bathtubs etc.
There are around 20 different drivers and opponents to choose from-all of which are customisable to a point, ie: you can name each one anything you like-this does not sound like much now, but back in the day this was half the fun-naming each character after people you know/TV characters, etc. It was also fun to see your friends arguing over who got to play as the ‘Fonz’ lookalike, Spider, and who had to play as Dwayne the Hillbilly…
The controls are simple – you just need to accelerate, turn and slow down. There are a few modes of playing. You can compete against computer opponents in single races or tournaments, or you can race your friends in head to head mode. The skill of the game came from learning how to drift round the corners, and how to avoid being bashed off the table by your evil friends, causing you to fall to your doom and have to catch up to the pack upon re-spawning.
And multi-player is what this game is all about. The “J-Cart” shown above was a revelation back in the day-two extra controller ports built into the cartridge for no extra cost…this allowed 4 players racing with standard controls, or up to 8 players racing at the same time using only 4 controllers! (two people to each controller-the cars auto accelerated, one person steered left and right with the D-pad, pressing ‘down’ to break, and one person used the A+C buttons and B to break).
You cannot imagine the cluster f**k of having 8 teenagers in one bedroom, gathered round a 12 inch CRT portable TV, all trying to “cheat” by knocking each other off the course and hogging the controller you were supposed to be sharing with your peer…hilarity and good natured animosity would always ensue in equal measure…
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