Happy Sonic Day!
Wednesday, 23rd June 2010, 7:45pm (UTC), 1 Comment
Happy Sonic 19th Anniversary everybody! Nearly the big 2-0. Hopefully there'll be massive things in the works for both Sega and the community on that one, but for now, I hope you've enjoyed your Sonic birthday celebrations. Even if it's as simple as mentioning to someone "hey, Steve, did you know it's the nineteenth anniversary of the very first Sonic game today?" Hopefully Steve replied with a sort of intrigued "hm..!" sound and not "who are you?", "why are you in my house?", or "I'm not Steve, I'm your Grandmother".

If you're looking to round the day off nicely with some Sonic 1 related goodness, I actually have two things of note for you:

Firstly, the Labyrinth Zone artwork by resident artist Ricky Earl has been online for the last couple of days, which you might like to enjoy. Judging by Sonic's particular predicament in it though, he probably doesn't. Ah, air bubbles, you elusive bastards, you.

Labyrinth Zone by Ricky Earl

Secondly, if you feel like playing Sonic 1 on this holiest of days, but want a bit of a twist to it, I highly recommend Mercury's (creator of the awesome map extractor utilities that have made mapping Sonic CD and Sonic 3 a relative breeze for me) newest work: Sonic: the One Ring. It's a Sonic 1 hack in which there is only one ring in each act, and it must be collected and carried to the end in order to complete it. I've only just had a chance to load it up, I'll be honest, but if even the very first act is anything to go by, it's quite a challenging twist on something so familiar. Top marks! Here's a video if you don't believe me:



While I'm plugging his game, I may as well also use it to plug my selection of Sonic 1 maps, which I'm about to use myself to figure out where the hell this blasted first ring might be!
Comments   1 Comment has been posted.
#1. Comment posted by Mercury on Thursday, 24th June 2010, 5:46am
I love how Ricky Earl's art pieces capture actual moments and feeling from their respective levels, rather than just depicting what the Zone looks like.

Also, thanks for the plug. I had Zone: 0 in mind a lot while making it - in fact, I had the idea for it because I was thinking about how the forum here is a little sleepy.

Sonic has been played out, and not many people need maps just to make it through to the end. I thought if I could make a hack based on exploration, that might change, if only just a little.

Oh, and Happy Birthday, Sonic!

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