Sunday, October 19, 2008

Video Page Nonsense & Halloween Oranges

This update was a bit scattered, but still interesting for SonicGear.
Bottom of post contains annoying personal commentary, so watch out!

Ramping up toward Halloween, there are some mutant plushes and another entry for the calander of crud page. Yes, it's a halloween Sonic but he's holding an orange. Yes, it's supposed to be a pumpkin but it REALLY looks like they were trying for an orange. The fabric is textured like an orange, it has no pumpkin contours and they sewed on felt orange leaves (the leaf of an orange tree is a pointed oval, the leaf of a pumpkin is wide and complex) The other Crud entry was valentines Amy with a bunch of roses and mysterious hearts on her glove. That sort of baffles me but...oh well.

A variety of other little things went up in order to clear out the mail. (oy) That was pretty successful though, enabling...

The fixing of 2 pages worth of commercial videos. Japan Ads 2 and 3 have now been repaired to the greatest extent possible. Which is nice because EVERY SINGLE video on 2 was broken! Argh flighty youtube users deleting their stuff or moving it around. However, unlike page 1, this was not a total success. Page 2 has 2 broken ones, and 3 still has a broken one. Hopefully they'll turn up again on some video site, and when they do, the links will be restored. (the ones that went missing were pretty cool too, so it's a bit of a shame)

It'll be onto USA ads next, and then video-blowout time with the section overhaul.
Coming up?
Halloween. The halloween update will have some were-hog stuff on it (why does it only conjure images of Sonic turning into a pig?) and of course anything else costume related or halloween-ish that appears between now and then.

Annoying Personal Commentary:
I don't like the 'were hog'. The name is dumb. It is inaccurate. He is already a hedgehog. A Werehedgehog or werehog would be a human or other species of animal (IE a chimp or a horse) who becomes a hedgehog when under a full moon.
He is not changing into another specific creature, but rather mutating quickly into a variety of the SAME animal. Is the full moon involved? Is the moon full through-out the game? The prefix "WERE" mythos relies on full moons.

The were-hog is a bit of a bogus concept. It doesn't seem "Sonic" like. It seems OOC (out of character) The fact that it is also preposterously stretchy does not help it. (A now defunct toy in the USA was a grinning doofus-like 'super hero' called "Stretch Armstrong" who had a doll which you could pull on to extend the limbs which were putty-like. It was not very entertaining)

The game itself is going to have to be SERIOUSLY fun and convincing to make the concept cool. The play mechanic and plot are really going to have to be sent into over-drive for the whole concept to not look rediculous. At the start I was hoping the whole thing would simply get swept under the rug a bit, in favor of the 'awesome 2d-3d gameplay' and 'mega great graphics' but with merchandise and costume characters already zooming around it doesn't look that way.

Note: Were-costume actually looks accurate/like the thing. Why? It has more human/ape like proportions to start with. Who thought the whole "Sonic turns into a stretchy goonish monster" sounded "Teeewtally aweeesome" and then greenlit the game?