SonicJPNews archive blog: Summary of SXSW2019 Sonic Panel & related Tweets!

2019/03/17

Summary of SXSW2019 Sonic Panel & related Tweets!

News from 2019.03.16-18
Archived on 2019.03.18

Gotta Go Fast: The Official Sonic The Hedgehog Panel happened in SXSW 2019 on March 16th in Austin and very cool & exciting pieces of information were presented by awesome panelists!


As announced in Official Sonic Twitter of the US as follows, the SXSW panel delivered some interesting news!

I will list here all the information revealed & tweets by the people from official side related to those topics!

Here is the video of livestream on Twitch for those who couldn't watch it live (like me) or those who want to feel that excitement all over again!

Gotta Go Fast: The Official Sonic The Hedgehog Panel — SXSW Gaming — Friday 15 - Sunday 17 March, Austin, TX von SXSWGaming auf www.twitch.tv ansehen

Panelists


From left to right:
  • Aaron Webber: Community Manager, SEGA of America. Our Sonic social media & meme guy!
  • Takashi Iizuka: Head of Sonic Team, SEGA of America. What's that cool T-shirt he's wearing? Oh and it's his birthday today!
  • Jasmin Hernandez: Unit Production Manager, SEGA of America. Cheerful as always! And cool Sonic wear & cute blue rose.
  • Jun Senoue: Sonic Team Composer, SEGA. First time to be at SXSW, he flew all the way from Tokyo to be here!
  • Austin Keys: Head of Product Development, SEGA of America. Also a humble master of languages. Respect!

Aaron and everybody don't like boring panel, so let's cheer when you see your favorite stuff!

Let's see...

Summary & New Stuff Revealed!

0) Tails Adventure 3 for SEGA Game Gear! Coming in April 2051!


Iizuka-san: "...no, that's not approved."
Oh that's sad. Aaron is still trying every year to convince Iizuka-san. :p

Anyway, this is the 4th year for Sonic to be at SXSW. What will we hear today?

So many people traveled from faraway places to be at the panel (including Senoue-san!). The number of attendants exceeded expectation, so that the SXSW staff had to prepare a second room for those who didn't fit in the first one. Wow!

1) Recap of year 2018 for Sonic: 

  • Sonic Mania and Sonic Mania Plus, and production of the physical copies - in which the team gave tremendous amount of work into. All of the hard work because they thought us fans deserved it well. Thank you team! Applause!
  • The animation series Sonic Mania Adventures on YouTube have over 55 million views in total. WOW!
  • Team Sonic Racing music by collaboration of Tee Lopes and Jun Senoue
  • SEGA shop went international: now in UK too!
  • Sonic and PUMA partnership: Sonic and Eggman shoes! Iizuka-san is wearing them today :D
  • New IDW Sonic comics launched!
  • Sonic Toaster! Crowdfunding reached twice the goal! Some of the audience got it too - somebody even wore a T-shirt with Sonic holding a piece of Sonic toast!
  • and much more happened... (like Sonic Forces)... but now talking about what's coming up:

2) Revealing another feature of Team Sonic Racing - Cart Customization

  • Team Sonic Racing is coming on May 21st
  • Developed by SUMO Digital
  • Race as a team with your friends or against them, both on- or offline
New gameplay & team racing mechanic
  • Wether you win or lose the race, you will get unique currency of the game which you can use for getting new car parts
  • Those parts can be used for customizing machines at garage for changing:
    • Car Performance
    • Horns
    • Paint (car color) - gold is a rare color.
      • also possible to take over color set of other characters' machines.
    • Vinyls (color changeable)
Aaron and Iizuka-san:
"So if I want to put Shadow in a hot pink car, can I do that?"
- "Yes, of course."
"And Big the Cat in a really edgy, black and red car? Can I do that?"
- "Yes, if you want to."

I can't wait to put Shadow in a hot pink & gold car.
Or change machine for Chao to a really edgy design and ace the race.




3) Another music for Team Sonic Racing:

Aaron: "Jun, tell us what it was like when they first approached you to do the music for TSR."
Senoue-san: "Just simplified: 'Yeees'."

For him, it's been almost 8 years since he was in charge of handling allover music for a Sonic game (last time was Sonic Generations), so he was very excited for this opportunity.

Since an important keyword of the game is "team", he wanted to integrate this theme into sound creation too; he contacted Johnny Gioelli, his team member of Crush 40, and told him that they can make new music and song for Sonic, which they have been waiting for.
Senoue-san also contacted Tee Lopes (with whom he worked together in Sonic Mania), Hyper Potions (Sonic Mania Plus trailer), and Taylor Smith from Dangerkids (Theme of Infinite from Sonic Forces) for further collaboration and chose courses for each of them to create the music for.

Senoue-san: "It's fun and stimulating to work with such young and talented musicians like them."

He also teamed up with in-house members like Tomoya Ohtani, and a new member in the team working on the music whose name was not yet revealed.

With these members he is teaming up, Senoue-san is making variety of music for different courses of the game, and the total amount of music is no less than other core Sonic games - that is exciting to hear!

(And a loud cheering for Sonic Unleashed, yes!)

TSR music also contain remix of older tracks, such as Sand Hill from Sonic Adventure. What was the process of sound development for the game?

As Senoue-san was told that the game will have 7 zones with 21 courses in total with everything Sonic themed, he thought he can't just miss the older tracks and decided to mix new sounds and existing sounds. He was also careful not to use them too excessively.
Sand Hill for example, composed by Kenichi Tokoi for a mini game in SA, was kind of the music he thought would be a good surprise for Sonic fans. And so he went on with the idea to arrange the music in an aggressive tune to fit the racing atmosphere.

Senoue-san: "Tee Lopes's arrangement was so great, and I did some arrangements on my end too, and recorded it with my band. It's one of my favorites."

And here, thanks to the motivated audience at the panel, comes the reveal of a new track for TSR!
A track from Sonic Heroes...and that is:


BINGO PARTY!


 We can hear screams of joy from the audience!

This is a team-up with TORIENA, a Japanese chip-tune artist. What a cool remix!
TORIENA's website: http://toriena.net/

She also tweeted about her contribution to the game on Twitter.

Excitement over the game music for Sonic never cease!

4) A new animation series: Team Sonic Racing Overdrive

The next announcement it also related to TSR, but they first mentioned Sonic Mania Adventures, the animation featuring the world of the world of Sonic Mania and Sonic Mania Plus.

...Animation? Did we hear animation?!

YES!! After the success of the short animations series with Classic Sonic, we are now getting another animation series, this time featuring Modern Sonic!!

Work by Tyson Hesse and Neko Production!! This is going to be nothing but amazing!!!
Team Sonic Racing Overdrive is the title, and they showed us some of the character setting boards of main characters!

Look at how beautifully they are designed! Tyson, you are the best. Seriously. Thank you for this.








According to Jasmin, this series won't have voices in them due to two reasons: 1) to make it understandable no matter what language you speak, and 2) budget and time (probably the main reason). So it is going to be a similar silent style to Sonic Mania Adventures.

But! If the company notices the serires' popularity, they might be able to get more budget to let the characters have their voices! Let's support the work by watching it repeatedly when it comes out! 

And cool, they also allowed us to take a look at a 15 sec sample ---

wait, what? Not just the sneak peek, but the WHOLE EPISODE 1?!!! That is crazy! 

The video was uploaded on that day on their YouTube channel too, and here it is! Are you ready for the show?

Enjoy it! And smash that replay button to show support!!



Part 2 or 2 is arriving towards end of April.


[Below here until the next topic, it's just me going crazy over how good this animation is - read at your own risk]


Oh wisps! Cute! And there they come, the racing gangs!
Looks great already from start. Such smooth animation of characters and car actions!

I love that versus scene, look how they grin to the other team! This is great, already confirmed.

Oh yeah. Big is on his own pace, like always. So many cool scenes of him.
"Froggy?!"

Sonic will never handle girls or adorable little Chao roughly. But he will make fun of Shadow by driving backwards in front of him. That's so Sonic and I love it.
Older brother-mode Sonic and...


Rival-mode Sonic!


Unlike Sonic, though, Shadow does revenge on Chao without a second thought. And does not really try to avoid hitting somebody (Big) with a car. Oh the ultimate lifeform.
Oh but look at those Chao. They are just enjoying another roller coaster feeling I guess.

Knuckles is such a good guy there, knocking a bomb away to avoid his teammate from being hit  even when he then gets bruises all over from not seeing where his cart is when falling... Well, he is tougher than leather.
Love this Sonic's expression. "A-Are you sure you're okay? Erm, thanks anyway."

Hmm, what is Eggman up to this time? Love those paper beards, can I have one too?


Yacker's help! Let's go, "Boost, on"! --Oh wait that's a different anime.
(Check out Cyber Formula if you don't know. Kanemaru-san is voicing the protagonist)


Oh I just love how they show each character's personality in seconds. Just like in SMA.

So many game elements, so many expressions, so many... Froggies. Who doesn't love this?

And that Amy with hovering exclamation mark above her head along with Chao is so adorable. She's got the choice of weapons now, uh oh.
And how we missed those Chao speaking SFX. Now I'll go check on Chao in SA games. Or when are we getting a Chao Garden app, pretty please?

And the mixture of 3DCG and 2D animation worked so well in this. Please make more of these!

(OK I could talk about more details but I have to stop now or we won't reach next topic)

Oh but honestly I had no idea the script distributed among the audience was going to be a real thing for 'Big the cat moment' in this episode. When I thought it was just another Big joke. So clever of them.

And there we have our happy Big with Froggie goods.


That leads to the next topic, namely...

5) Team Sonic Racing merchandise

THE FROGGIE-T IS REAL!
Look at this gorgeous Jasmin. That shirt is also available online now on SEGA shops!


"Froggie shirts are real." - Aaron Webber 2019

TSR Merchs on SEGA shop include:
  • Froggie T-shit
  • TSR Logo Pin
  • Sonic and Shadow T-shirt - the one Iizuka-san is wearing!
  • Barrel of Doom Mug (for real!) - Tyson Hesse's idea realized by Hoshino-san!
Get yours now!
US Shop: https://shop.sega.com/collections/team-sonic-racing
UK Shop: https://segashop.co.uk/


6) IDW comic

Issue 16 cover is there! Wow, that's  all-star!

Iizuka-san on making new Sonic comic series with IDW:
  • It's a fun and fresh new experience
  • Tangle and Whisper represent fun new heroes in the world; they both have special quality and skill, in same way Rough and Tumble, the new enemies Sonic and his friends face to.
  • New enemies approaching... read the comics to find out!

7) Sonic Boom series DVD

Sonic's spin-off TV series Sonic Boom is obtainable as DVD! A nice gift for kids and grandkids!

Season 2 DVD comes out in June, including a bonus episode related to TSR!

And yes, of course Aaron knows about the bingo cards, and unfortunately no 'No Boom news'! Sorry!

8) Team Sonic Racing Soundtrack

TSR's soundtrack, named 'MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE' is heading towards us!
  • 3 discs
  • 130 tracks
  • Release on May 29th, also in digital platforms from the day 1

9) Sonic Mania remix track: Knuckles' Theme Special Remix 

In addition to this info, we got to listen to another Sonic Mania remix track! They literary just made it done for this event - finished on Wednesday, so three days ago!

The original theme is from Sonic & Knuckles, Yes, it's about that red and spiky, sometimes angry, echidna!

Knock knock, its...

Knuckles' Theme Special Remix by Tee Lopes, featuring Juns Senoue!


 That flute part in the middle has a little bit of Japanese taste in it, I think. Cool remix!
It's got a lot of easter eggs, including Knuckles' Theme from Sonic Adventure in Senoue-san's guitar part! Did you catch that?

10) Sonic the Movie

More information will come from Paramount.
(Hopefully something that makes us optimistic about the movie.)

11) Mobile Apps for Sonic 

Sonic Dash is celebrating its 6th anniversary! With over 50 million downloads worldwide, they are preparing a big update! Congrats & SEGA Hardlight!

Here are the links for those who haven't downloaded it yet:
https://www.sega.com/games/sonic-dash

12) Q&A session

Quick summary of all questions and answers:
  • Q) If crossover between Sonic and Batman happens: How would they meet the Joker?
  • A) Iizuka-san: I... have no idea. 
  • A) (in response to the request for a tie-up with DC) Aaron: Uhh, if there are people from DC here, come talk to me!
  • Q) Recent leaks on Sonic Movie: how did the leaks happen? What are the prevention method?
  • A) Aaon: A deep question... There is nothing we can comment on movie related topics at this panel. But thank you for your effort and energy for doing podcasts!
  • Q) What's your favorite Sonic meme?
  • A) Jasmin: Sonic Boom doll, 'cause I created that. And Sanic in general.
  • A) Aaron: Sanic in every evolving form. He is becoming more than what he once was. And that one song with Knuckles repeating over and over.
  • A) Senoue-san: Sanic. That's my answer.
  • A) No answer from Iizuka-san. He can't decide!
  • Q) Animation: how long does it take to make one episode of Sonic Mania Adventures?
  • A) Jasmin: Production started in Fall 2017, and first episode launched in March. So few months even just for 2 and half minutes of animation. (That's about half a year for just 300 seconds of animation. Respect.)
  • Q) Any chance that the art style for TSR Overdrive was inspired by Sonic Battle?
  • A) Jasmin: More of CG animation style; base is current modern Sonic art.
  • A) Aaron got more of Jet Set Radio vibe from the style.
  • Q) Any chance we will get another game like Sonic Generations? As a look-back game to celebrate the past series?
  • A) Iizuka-san: Currently there is no concrete plan for such game, but if there is a good timing for that, it could happen again in the future.
  • Q) Any chance to get exclusive pre-order bonuses for TSR in the US, just like the ones in Japan?
  • A) Aaron: Where is the marketing guy? Oh he is running away. No news on that, but if that happens, we will let you know immediately.
  • Q) Any insights on concept and ideas for Sonic Rivals? (Inspiration for making the game)
  • A) Iizuka-san: The PSP version? Oh good. Sonic was a platform action with solo-gameplay until that point, but we thought: what if we had a versus battle game for Sonic? So we made it with a studio in Canada.
  • Q) If Sonic Mania is in the line with Sonic Generations, is Sonic Forces on its separate timeline?
  • A) Iizuka-san: Modern Sonic is always happening in the same timeline. Classic Sonic is on its separate timeline.
  • Q) Are we going to see Super Sonic in the comics? Are events in comics cannon?
  • A) Aaron: Comics have their own stories, sometimes they follow the games, but many times they branch out in its own crazy ways. And if Super Sonic happens in comics, is it going to be considered canon, right, Iizuka-san?
  • A) Iizuka-san: Yes.

13) No giveaways this year? Of course yes! TSR concept art poster!
Shadow, Amy and Chao racing through! Get them at Meet & Greet session!

14) Sonic Mania Speedrun Competition is happening! 
Get that shiny Phantom Ruby Trophies!

15) One important confirmation by Iizuka-san

Iizuka-san: "We have begun production of the next major Sonic title!"

Oh yes!! Let's wait for the news in the future!

16) Guess what, it's Iizuka-san's birthday! Everybody sing Happy Birthday!

So it happened as everybody expected! Good luck on your new age, Iizuka-san!



17) To wrap up: 

Everybody say SE-GA-!


That's about it! Thank you for the never-boring panels, Aaron! For your hard work, Iizuka-san! For your cool merchs, Jasmin! For your great sounds, Senoue-san! And for your translations (beside your usual tasks), Austin! It was a great time!


And here are the important info from the panel packed in several official tweets!






And a redirect to this article...
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