Sonic Gear goes International!

Sonic Gear has gone international!
Now you can read www.sonicgear.org in NINE different languages! There's English, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese! It's so great to be able to show people from around the world all the different Sonic the hedgehog items in their own preferred language. After all, it's a showcase of EVERYthing no matter where it's from, so you should be able to read it, no matter where you're from!

The translation software went through a recommendation by someone who actually speaks one of the other languages, and they rated it better than googletrans or babelfish, so it should be mostly affective if you want to read it in whatever language. I know some units just make a big mess, and people switch to English, even if they don't know it that well, to be able to make it out. This shouldn't be the case, here. It was surprisingly easy to do, taking only about an hour to set it up, and it looks like it's workin' fine.

If you press the non-latin-letters-using languages, like Japanese/Chinese etc. it kinda tweaks the formatting a bit, because their letters are so big. Shockingly though, it's nothing horrible or format-wrecking and will hopefully look nice and readable for anyone coming from there.

Anyway, this is such a cool milestone for Sonic Gear!

Videos Wrap Up...for now

Did you notice something new on the index of www.sonicgear.org ?
That's right, the video section got its own link block! There were so many pages of fun Sonic commercials, show clips and trailer-like items that Video on the web needed its own block. This of course, has exposed a large blank space next to it. Wondering what goes there?
The games pages.
The games pages will be a BIG deal when they come out, with box art, reviews, clips, and screencaps. So then why isn't it here already? First, because a lot of other sites already have in-depth game coverage, and Gear does not want to duplicate what's already out there. Second, it's going to be a big load of complicated pages with a bunch of media that needs to be gathered, including reviews from an outside source.

But was there a REAL update?
You bet. More videos for the video section went up along with the nice new navigation. The commercials are pretty much wrapped up for now. There are a few rare ones, and of course the one with 'degraded sound' that need to be hunted down, but the bulk of the content is now up and watchable. The rest will come like the updates to the regular stuff, so keep checking back for more fun.

Video Fun & Frusteration

The new video pages for Sonic Gear seem to be a success.
There were TONS more great Sonic the Hedgehog ads, clips, and music videos than anticipated, making the new section a great success! With how simple it is to make pages of videos, the fun continues quite quickly with speedy updates.

http://www.sonicgear.org/ShowPages/SonicVideoPage.html page has proved a bit unstable though...as youtube's show clips are mysteriously moved and removed. Unfortunatly it also looks like 99.9% of youtubes' content is also against its rules! So there's not much Gear can do in the way of improving how the clips remain. A reasonable solution is to have the page viewers email if they find a broken clip. With dozens of clips, it would be impossible to 'police' them every day looking for ones that don't load.

A 'sneek peek' was in the wings (and still is) for the fall line of Toy Island Sonic action figures. It was delayed due to...boredom!
What? you may ask "a Sonic figure...boring? Thats outrageous!"

Well, not with TI's latest and lamest effort (or should we say affront!) The 2 new lines revealed are Megabot 2, and Super Posable. Well, the Super Posable figures stick to their name, with jointed knees and elbows. (presumably rotate-able hands/feet too) but so what, really because Space Fighters did that already. And MegaBot 2 is downright HIDEOUS. The figures are disgusting. Also, they're posting an exact dupe of the Sonic (with exploding robot) from their first series.

The only saving grace I can think of for Toy Island is that these new figures are still in the "Working" phase, and the end result won't be nearly as ugly or badly done. And that they'll put out a new pose or something to spice up Sonic. As for the Super Posables, they need work (round the elbows, people! It's not hard) but seem more of a "buy this" than that BS Megabot2.

Understandably, this update is not that impressive, just due to lack of quality. Plus, the videos are exciting, fresh, and fun to watch. The section is also pretty popular, so it gets a bit of a higher rank, at least until it's nicely established.