Tomoya Ohtani’s Sound Column on Sonic Forces music

News from 2017.04.21
Archived on 2017.04.25 on Tumblr

Sonic Channel Sound Column: Tomoya Ohtani’s KEEP ON RUNNING★ 
“Sonic Forces” Information Reveal! 2017.04.21

VISIT THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE FIRST! That way you show respect to your favorite composer.

http://sonic.sega.jp/SonicChannel/soundcolumn/ohtani/20170421_001338/ 

There are many cool and interesting photos in the article too! Don’t miss them!

Sonic Forces Interview with Iizuka-san by Famitsu

News from 2017.04.18
Archived on 2017.04.23 on Tumblr

I finally finished it!!
Translation of the Famitsu.com article on Interview with producer Takashi Iizuka about Sonic Forces is here! (Original issue: 2017.04.18)

https://www.famitsu.com/news/201704/18130922.html 

↑ ↑ ↑ Take a look at the original article before proceeding. 
This is important. It’s to show our respect to Iizuka-san, the interviewer of Famitsu, and everyone behind it by increasing the page view of their content.

Let’s show that we want to know more about Sonic!

First Tweets by SonicJPNews

News from 2017.03.22
Archived on 2019.03.05

These were the very first tweets I made with the brand new account. The set-off!

Hi community!
Here is the account where Japanese Sonic news will be retweeted, translated and posted. May not be the fastest, but correct!三🔵

— ●SonicJPNews● (@SonicJPNews) March 22, 2017

I decided to create this account as I noticed some information about Sonic written in Japanese are sometimes mistaken by non-JP-speakers. 三🔵

— ●SonicJPNews● (@SonicJPNews) March 22, 2017

So, here is my try to translate some important Japanese Sonic info into English!
I'll try to deliver as much details as possible. 三🔵

— ●SonicJPNews● (@SonicJPNews) March 22, 2017

For the next few days I'll focus on news about the 25th anniversary games "Sonic Mania" & "Sonic Forces". Let's see how this is gonna work!🔴

— ●SonicJPNews● (@SonicJPNews) March 22, 2017

As new pieces of information on upcoming Sonic games were anticipated, I was very motivated and wanted to start translating stuff right away.


But before that, I had to set my own tweeting style so people can recognize my tweets easily.

Initially, I intended to mark my tweets as follows, thinking that the round blue ball next to 三 (kanji for the number three, which should resemble speeding lines) would look like Sonic doing spin dash. And the red ball for the finito.

🔵- will be shown with this symbol 🔵- at the beginning.

The last tweet of the whole thread will be marked with a '🔴', just like this one! 🔴

— ●SonicJPNews● (@SonicJPNews) March 27, 2017

One thing I forgot to mension:
If a translation doesn't fit in one tweet, I'm showing it with the 三🔵(or 三⭕) at the end.
It's continuation三🔵

— ●SonicJPNews● (@SonicJPNews) March 27, 2017

As you can see in tweets from a month later following these, I noticed that many people didn't seem to read the whole thread. I realized that the symbols might not be visible from some people's phones; or I wasn't posting fast enough. IAs I had to switch my keyboard between Japanese and English, it also became more and more bothering to type these sybmols in when I was very busy or tired and still had to do translations. (Back then I was less lazy and translated tweets immediately as I found them - and that for EVERY tweet that seemed somehow relevant, even when they were more of daily comments and diaries of Sonic Team members)

All that overwork was taking too much time away from me, so I changed my tweeting style to a less frequent one. I don't translate everything if they seem very straightforward or when I don't have enough time and passion for. I hope you understand.

Also, I'm pretty sure that the blue spin-dashing Sonic at the beginning of my tweets is enough to see who is writing at one glance. Right? :)

(Additional comments from: 2019.03.09)

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🍵Please support me through Ko-fi! I'm not a fan of coffee, but a cup of hot tea would help me translate things faster.

Short History of SonicJPNews

2017.03.20 - now

The following tweets were the starting point of SonicJPNews.

you're very welcome!😁
I know that feeling of not neing able to get full info because of the language wall. I noticed today that -

— Knuttunk(クヌート) (@Knuttunk55) March 20, 2017

-many English speakers are getting some important Japanese Sonic info wrong… I'm thinking about creating special account for it.

— Knuttunk(クヌート) (@Knuttunk55) March 20, 2017

where I post original and translated Japanese Sonic news. What do you think? :)

— Knuttunk(クヌート) (@Knuttunk55) March 20, 2017

Sure! Thank you for the encouragement! I'll try to make it work today or tomorrow and will let you know :)

— Knuttunk(クヌート) (@Knuttunk55) March 20, 2017

It was that moment when saw somebody showing their disapprovement over a google-translation of a Japanese tweet fom Shun Nakamura-san, the producer of Sonic Forces, who had been giving out hints and sneak-peeks of the upcoming game.

It went like this: the person understood the tweet as the game's next trailer comes in fall, which would be almost half a year from that day.
In the original tweet, however, it was stated that the game's FINAL trailer would come somewhere in autumn. Not the next one.

Some people reacted negatively to the mistranslated information, which I did not see as a good sign.  If their misunderstanding remains, it would do no good for both fans and developers.

When I was talking about this small incident on how a small translation error could lead to huge gap in information, and how I could make a Twitter account dedicated for Sonic with translations of Japanese tweets into English to avoid such trouble, a friend on Twitter, Menno, encounraged me to realize the idea - so I did!


I decided on the name for the new account rather quickly. I wanted to make it simple and easy to remember.
The name SonicJPNews is a combination of three words: Sonic (obvious, yeah), JPN (= Japan) and News.
You can call it however you want, but I personally read it as 'Sonic J-P-news'.
Actually I'm curious how you read it - Sonic Japan News? Japanews would sound funny, too.

Then I drew this little Sonic icon inspired by 'Sonic the Sketchhog' of the official Sonic website. This little smiling Sonic has been my buddy ever since.

Anyway, I hope to be a help of those who want to catch up with Japanese news which are Sonic and SEGA related.
Enjoy!

-----------------------------
🍵Please support me through Ko-fi! I'm not a fan of coffee, but a cup of hot tea would help me translate things faster.

Translation of Sonic 25th anniversary interview by Famitsu with Sonic Team legends (by Windii)

News from 2016.06.24 
Archived on 2020.12.30 

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Translation by Windii 

https://twitter.com/lesbianmamiya

https://pastebin.com/u/Windii

☕Send coffee for Windii → https://ko-fi.com/windii

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Original interview: https://www.famitsu.com/news/201606/24107383.html

『ソニック・ザ・ヘッジホッグ』誕生・ヒット・新生の真実をソニックチームのレジェンドクリエイターが、25周年のいま明かす　秘蔵資料満載の永久保存版！
The legendary creators of Sonic Team reveal the truth about the birth, success, and rebirth of "Sonic the Hedgehog" on the 25th anniversary: A permanent collection of treasured documents!

Written by: Manami Rei

Photographed by: Nagayama Wataru

"The secrets of the Sonic series, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary"

The 2010s have been a series of anniversary years for various video game titles, but 2016 is also a memorable year for Sonic the Hedgehog, which was released in 1991 for SEGA's Mega Drive, marking the 25th anniversary of its release. Although it was released on the lesser-known hardware of the Mega Drive, it was a big hit, especially in North America, thanks in part to the dramatic speed that hasn't been seen before in previous games and the cool character modeling of its protagonist. After continuous releases of sequels and several rebirths, the number of titles released in the series has now reached nearly 100.

How was Sonic, known around the world as "the face of SEGA," created, and how did it become popular and turn into a series? We invited Naka Yuuji, Ooshima Naoto, and Iizuka Takashi, the main creators of the "Sonic" series, to talk about the birth of Sonic, its hits, and how it has evolved over the years. Since they are old acquaintances who spent their 20's and 30's together, the conversation was very lively, and lasted for an unusually long time, over three hours in total. There are many anecdotes that could be revealed today for the first time, making this interview a valuable "biography of Sonic Team" and not only about the "Sonic" series. We hope that this article will remind not only fans of the "Sonic" series, but also the "SEGA people" who lived through the era from the Mega Drive to the Dreamcast, of their passionate feelings at that time.

Naka Yuuji

Born in 1965 in Osaka, he joined SEGA in 1984 and worked on the SEGA Mark III version of Phantasy Star and Space Harrier as a programmer. He attracted attention as a genius programmer. Since then, he has produced many titles for Sonic Team, such as the "Sonic the Hedgehog" series and "Phantasy Star Online". In 2006, he left and established PROPE. He serves as its president and CEO.

Ooshima Naoto

Born in 1964 in Osaka. After working at an advertising agency, he joined SEGA in 1987. As a graphic designer, he was in charge of character design for Sonic. As a director, he was involved in works such as "Sonic the Hedgehog CD", "NiGHTS into dreams..." and "Burning Rangers". In 1999, he retired from SEGA and became a founding member of Artoon, where he created "Blinx: The Time Sweeper" and other titles. Currently, as the executive vice-president of Arzest, he is also involved in the development of "Mario & Sonic AT Rio Olympics" for Nintendo 3DS.

Iizuka Takashi

Born in 1970 in Saitama Prefecture. He joined SEGA in 1992 and worked on the Mega Drive version of "Sonic the Hedgehog 3" as a planner, then became a director on "Sonic Adventure" and producer on "Sonic Colors", and has been involved in the development of the "Sonic" series almost constantly. He has developed games in the United States twice, and in March 2016, he travelled there for the third time to oversee the Sonic series.

"Shocking confession! Sonic was actually not a corporate character of SEGA?!"