I’m back from New York City and had the pleasure of attending SEGA’s annual Sonic Boom event on October 4th! Here’s a recap so everyone knows what they missed:

Upon entry, guests were given swag bags consisting of 2 24×36” posters based on the new Rise of Lyric and Shattered Crystal titles, as well as Sonic Boom tote bags like the ones handed out at this year’s E3 and PAX.

On the far left side, you could buy Ted Poley’s CDs or prints and sketches from Archie artist Tracy Yardley! at the merchandise booth. Unfortunately, since Tracy was selling both the prints and sketching, it was hard to get in and get out; the line from the booth lasted until the end of the event.

In the center, you could get autographs from various musicians, voice actors and game designers who have made the Sonic franchise possible through their hard work. Unfortunately, they were only available for about thirty minutes each (except Mike Pollock, who was around for about an hour), and the line control wasn’t all there.

On the right side of the room, one could view display cases of upcoming Sonic Boom merchandise from TOMY (the same seen at E3) as well as play demo versions of both Sonic Boom titles.

And last but not least, in the far back was the stage, where Stephen Frost alternated between interviewing guests about the Sonic Boom brand and having Tomoya Ohtani and Jun Sunoue perform a variety of music ranging from the Deadly Six theme to Metal Harbor to Rooftop Run.

Besides Stephen Frost interviewing guests like Bob Rafei and Takashi Iizuka about the Sonic Boom project, a variety of skits were had on stage courtesy of co-host Mike Pollock. For example, Mike Pollock voiced Eggman saying some ridiculous lines in the skit “What Was Eggman Thinking?,” including but not limited to Eggman bragging that he had finally managed to master twerking.

We were also treated to a live reading of four separate scenes by the entire cast of all six voice actors, and I highly encourage you to check them out on Youtube. Knuckles fans beware, Rad Red’s intelligence is shown once again to not be top notch in the Boom series. Scenes varied from the gang reading a copy of Amy’s play (which referenced the various main cast members under thinly-veiled pseudonyms, such as the strong Shoulders character) to Tails developing an invention that is supposed to translate any language, but instead conveys what a speaker really means… almost revealing Amy’s affections for Sonic in the process, to Amy and Eggman discovering they have a shared interest in a game and going to a convention themed around it, leading to Sonic and co. going to it as well so as to keep her safe.

The cosplay contest had a considerable amount of talent, and it was decided to let the crowd decide who would come out on top. While Mecha Sonic coming out first was unsurprising, a plainclothes cosplayer who was “Chris Thorndyke when he becomes older and a hipster” received third. There was also one Sally Acorn cosplayer and she received an enormous amount of applause despite not placing in the top three.

The show concluded with a performance by Ted Poley and Tony Harnell, singing both versions of It Doesn’t Matter as well as We Can, Escape from the City, and Sonic Boom.

I had a chance to meet many Sonic fans from all over the country and the world at this year’s event, and am definitely looking forward to the next. I hope many of you will join me!

The wait is over, Sonic fans around the world!

SEGA America’s official Sonic Boom 2014 event has released details about its schedule as well as its tickets. The event will be held at Manhattan Center’s Grand Ballroom on October 4th from 5 to 10 PM.

Activities include the usual trivia and cosplay contests, but there will also be musical performances. Johnny Gioeli of Crush 40 cannot make it this year, but Jun Suneoue, Tomoya Ohtani, Ted Poley, and Tony Harnell will all present for what’s sure to be a one-of-a-kind Sonic concert!

Tickets are available through TicketMaster. Single tickets come out to around 42 US Dollars after fees.

You read that right! The staff behind Summer of Sonic, the Sonic Stadium, and Sonic the Comic – Online! have joined forces to bring a new convention to the United Kingdom this year!

City: York, England
Venue: Merchant Adventurers’ Hall
Date: October 26th, 2014
Time: TBA (all day)

Planned events:

Meet & Greet with Special Guests: Over the past few weeks and months we have been talking with many of the artists and writers who brought Sonic the Comic to life! We look forward to being able to announce the attendance of these guests at Sonic the Comic Con in the near future!

Art Classes and Tutorials: Our special guests have very kindly agreed to give attendees an opportunity to learn the tricks of the trade! These special sessions will be held throughout the day, to give budding artists a fantastic chance to learn from the best!

Competitions: We hope you will bring your skills along on the day and enter the art and writing contests, and show off your STC-inspired works! We also hope to be able to offer some very special prizes too!

Original Works: A range of original hand-drawn, hand-painted original covers and pages will be on display throughout the day, so you can come and lay your eyes on the incredible work that went into their creation.

Q&A Sessions: Our special guests will be talking about some of their fond memories of working on the comic, as well as answering your burning questions!

The convention has a Kickstarter that one can can donate to in order to guarantee entry. It has already raised its initial goal of £2,000, and so is for certain happening.

You can also donate to earn sweet rewards such as a con-exclusive T-Shirt, even if you can’t go!

Sonic the Comic Con has announced its first stretch goal of £2,500. If it reaches it, anyone who has donated £12 or more will receive a physical, full color copy of a Sonic the Comic – Online! issue that will be made as an exclusive for this event… whether you attend or not!

You can follow Sonic the Comic Con’s developments both at their Kickstarter page, and at their Facebook page.

Sonic Revolution 2014 ran from 10 AM to 6 PM on June 15th in Buena Park, California, but we’re hopeful the memories of the day will linger for quite some time in all of those who joined us!

Upon entering the Marquis Room, attendees had their hands stamped with a special Sonic stamp so that they could come and go as they pleased… few people could go the full 8 hours without food, after all!

The first stop for many attending the con was the Sonic merchandise booth, run by yours truly (I’m the round geek with his arm outstretched).

Attendees could then visit our artist alley, which while small, included Archie comics artist Evan Stanley and prominent fan artist Elson “Darkspeeds” Wong!

Perhaps one of the biggest surprises one could find on the floor were SEGA America brand manager Aaron Webber and Sonic Boom producer Stephen Frost! They attended as regular attendees, but were nonetheless kind enough to not only give us E3-exclusive tote bags to use as prizes, but do a short 30-minute panel where you could ask them practically any question about them or their work. Rather than come straight from E3 a few days earlier, they actually had flown back to San Francisco already, but came back down to Southern California just for the day!

Various events ran throughout the day, such as a costume contest, art contest, concert, and a discussion of video game music with Tommy Tallarico of Video Games Live.

The costume contest! First place went to this awesome Shard (from the Archie Sonic comic series) costume!

The art contest only had one entry, so we arranged for Elson Wong and Evan Stanley to have an art off. They were given one minute to draw Sticks the Badger auditioning for Sonic Boom; the topic was chosen by the audience.

Tommy Tallarico was a special guest, swinging by for a few hours so that he could discuss his work with Sonic the Hedgehog music as well as video games in general. Tommy left us with a parting gift, such as the sheet music for the Sonic the Hedgehog medley from VGL to give away as a prize!

Serenity Seven gave a rocking performance with songs from not only Crush 40, but also other musicians such as Tony Harnell! They even slipped in one piece of Sonic Underground music. That’s what I call being thorough!

We managed to get animator Chris Wilcots of the Sonic Prologue fanfilm as one of our special guests. He presented a clip from the upcoming film exclusive to the convention, detailing how Sonic Prologue is unique among fan films for being based on the stories in the manuals, rather than the plot of the games themselves.

During the panel, Stephen Frost had mentioned a game where Tails would discover he was deathly allergic to bees… and yet, Charmy would desire to become close friends with Tails. Player 1 would thus need to run through the whole game avoiding Player 2. Looks like someone was nice enough to sketch the image!

All good things eventually had to come to an end, however… but we made sure to get everyone who was there at closing in one big group photo!

You can see the full album here!

Plans for the coming years are not yet finalized, but you can rest assured I will inform anyone of any developments. We hope to see you at one of our or our affiliates’ events in the future!

You all know by now that I’m a Sonic meetup/event enthusiast, having worked on the Sonic Revolution convention and having followed (and sometimes assisted) Sonic fan event efforts around the world. This is primarily because of how much I enjoyed SEGA America’s Sonic Boom 2012 event, and how much I desire every fan to experience something similar.

As a result, today is a mixture of boy joy and sadness. First, the bad news.

The Summer of Sonic has, after six years of continuous collaboration and hard work between the Sonic community and SEGA Europe, been announced to not be happening this year. Due to the time constraints that staff members must work within, the event has been placed on hiatus, but there is hope for it to return again in the future. Read the full story over at the Sonic Stadium, Summer of Sonic’s primary organizer.

The good news is that SEGA America has announced Sonic Boom 2014, once again having changed locations. Details are scarce, but they are as follows:

Date: Saturday, October 4th, 2014
Time: Evening, TBA
Venue: Grand Ballroom at the Manhattan Center
Location: 311 W. 34th Street (next to Penn Station) New York City, NY

Information will be reported as it comes along. I hope many of you will be able to join other Sonic fans in the Big Apple later this year!

Attendees may put themselves as going on the event’s Facebook Page.

The Sonic Tampa Union is just about to conclude in Florida, and what a turnout!

The fun doesn’t have to stop in Florida for Sonic fans the world over. There’s no shortage of fan events that have been popping up around the globe since the Sonic revolution began nearly a year ago.

Every month I will post an update about all the events on the roster, and who knows, you may have something to mark your calendars for!

This is the current list of all known Sonic fan events:

April 2014

13^th – Weston Super Sonic April Meetup (Druckers, Weston-Super-Mare; 1 PM)

25^th – No Brand Con Sonic Meetup (The Plaza Hotel and Suites Lobby; Eau Claire, Wisconsin; 2-3 PM)

May 2014

31^st – Sonic New York Picnic (Central Park; New York City)

June 2014

1^st – Sonic London #14 (Namco Arcade, London; 1:30-5:00 PM)

15^th – Sonic Revolution 2014! (Buena Park, California; Marquis Room at Holiday Inn, 7000 Beach Blvd; 10 AM-6 PM)

September 2014

10^th – Gamestop Expo 2014 Meetup (Anaheim Convention Center; Anaheim, California)

If you’re ever starting your own event and would like some exposure, feel free to tip me off about it by sending an e-mail to oggyigel@gmail.com!

I’ll see you all in May, and hopefully will be able to report the dates of Sonic Boom and Summer of Sonic 2014! The most up to date list of upcoming Sonic events is located over at Sonic Revolution’s website!

We’re proud to announce that composer Tommy Tallarico of Video Games Live fame will be a special guest at our event. Mr. Tallarico will be talking about his work with Sonic music (he was one of the contributors to Sonic and the Black Knight’s soundtrack) as well as video game music in general. The audience will be more than welcome to ask him questions!

We’ve also taken a note from Summer of Sonic and have created a webpage made just for this year’s event! Give it a look sometime!

Did you miss the ticket “sales” on the 1st? Don’t fret – we have 50 more tickets going up for grabs on Saturday, March 8th at 10 AM PST. Tickets are free and you can grab more than one if you have any family or friends you’d want to bring along to the first fan-run Sonic convention in the United States! Tickets will be acquired at this link through EventBrite!

Mark your calendars and set your alarm clocks! These will be the last tickets available to the public for this year, though we will also have a standby line the day of the event if you don’t manage to snag one! Provided there is sufficient space after all ticketed entries, you will still be able to get into the event even without a ticket.

Want a guaranteed ticket rather than having to try your luck at sales? Book a room at the Holiday Inn Buena Park for June 14th and 15th with the group code “SGR” and e-mail a copy of your confirmation to sonicremix@sonic-revolution.net to receive a ticket in your name! We have a limit of fifteen tickets that will be handed out this way. Even if you already have a ticket, the group code is valid for all attendees to use to receive a discount.

Once this sale is over, we will have given away 150 tickets, and providing entry to press and special guests means we sadly lack the space to offer more. Best of luck with acquiring tickets, and we hope you’ll join us for eight hours of fun on June 15th! We have all sorts of fun activities planned for attendees and would love if you were one of them.

First off, tickets are now on sale via Eventbrite! They are free, so don’t hesitate to grab one; just please grab tickets only if you can actually attend. Here is the link where you can grab tickets. There’s a limit of ten tickets per attendee if you wanted to bring friends or family. Even if you don’t grab tickets, don’t fret; there will be a standby line at the venue.

Secondly, we finally have our hotel code for the Holiday Inn, good for Saturday and Sunday night. The code for Revolution attendees is: SGR. When booking a room at the Holiday Inn Buena Park’s website, simply enter the code under “Group Code” on the side to earn yourself a discount.

Third and finally, we have another special guest announcement!

We’re proud to report Evan Stanley, writer and illustrator of the Ghosts of the Future Sonic webcomic, and a contributing artist to Archie’s Sonic the Hedgehog comic series, will be at the event. She will be having an artist table for attendees to view her work, find out any information about her work, as well as receive autographs. She will also be a judge at the event’s art contest! Please stop by her table at some point during the event!