Monday, August 03, 2015

As An Archive...

Australia fans:
Boom stuff IS coming to you. There was an announcement poster/ad/thing made so you will be getting the figures & plushes at Toys R Us etc. The update this week was interrupted by the antivirus making the computer restart so that 1 item didn't get on. It's dated for 2015, so before the end of the year. The one new thing (all else you'll have already seen if you went to the Boom area on gear) is a rather strange lamp...

Interesting Article Sonic 2006
The fan Taaron discovered this interesting article on why Sonic 06 was the way it was. (bad load times & all) It's an interesting read, to be sure.

https://andrearitsu.wordpress.com/2015/08/01/just-how-did-sonic-2006-happen/

Don't miss this one if you're interested in the games...and especially don't miss it if you didn't like 06. It looks like the victim of a chain of disasters from all sides and many important people. Parts of it looked so beautiful though, that it's such a shame that happened.

As An Archive...
SonicGear is an archive of stuff. It's there to keep things around and preserve photos and info where they might disappear otherwise. It's done many things like that in the past, old cd's of images people were going to throw out, collecting stuff from & reposting from sites that were going to go down due to whatever, company stuff where they would only host it for a short while, and this type of thing. It looks like it's time to do it again.
A fan recently discovered an old Japanese collection site, something not modified since about 2002 or so. The owner, uncontact-able, the hosting a free service, and the pictures are small indicating old camera quality.

Don't rip it off:
It's important to draw a line between ripping something off & preserving a thing. So what generally happens when I discover something like a defunct/derelict site like that is to take all the images right away, but store them offline. That way, if it disappears, it's backed up. But if it springs back to life or the owner returns SonicGear isn't some duping site stealing up others' hard-worked content. The line, however, is difficult to draw because unless you're always checking up on something that's been 100% inactive for over 10 years...you're not gonna know when it finally goes.

The plan now is to start sprinkling the images onto gear crediting the original site's name (owner has no name written, or they named it after themselves) so if they want to suddenly appear and say something they can go for it.

Proto or No?
That JW plush & boombox post that went up may or may not move. Since they were 2013 photos there's certainly a chance that some kind of poor release happened with at least some of the stuff, making it not a prototype. It's still such a shame that JW had the license taken from them, while their dolls left much to be wanted they were improving & their figures are still the best.

It's after the end of July.
And the Gear Store did not destruct. This means that the big Amazon Button Update of July went over well and no old/bad/whatever was wrong with it code remained. The store should be fine and use able from now on without trouble.

Next week:
Well, the Australia info that didn't make the cut this time. A few archive type items, and hopefully someone finds something to send in too.