This incredibly evocative and thought-provoking art has now “gone live” on the Sonic 4 site. The piece, supplied untitled, echoes the stripped-down nature of the new Sonic product. The use of white space symbolises the game’s simple approach – the leaves of the tree represent the coming of spring.

As the tree renews itself each year, so too does the Sonic franchise. Let us hope the fruit it bears is not rotted and filled with writhing larvae.

Just imagine – that tree may scroll past while embedded in the background scenery. Makes you think.

A man called “Shark” sent in the two images you see crudely mashed-together below, claiming SEGA All-Stars Racing is guilty of copying and pasting the likeness of Italian singer Little Tony to represent Shenmue star Ryo.

Basically, we haven’t got any other material to use today and can’t face opening the Hotmail Account of Doom.

Here’s a bigger one of Little Tony, for your files.

The laughably useless “plot” area of the Sonic 4 web site is… very poor. As in, written by someone not entirely au fait with assembling words. We have screencapped it, for posterity.

We weren’t going to mention this at all, until we saw the use of “fly’s” in this bit. Putting the apostrophe there makes it mean something that belongs to a fly, or worse still, a shortened version of “fly is”.

Bizarre sentences, made worse through random comma placement.

“Then it was all a dream and mum came in with some fresh biscuits”.

PREVIOUSLY ON ‘LOST’.

Although… perhaps we are once again over-analysing a product aimed at children?

A prize to anyone who reads all the way through this one.

Now we can say “We told you so” when it turns out rubbish.

Seeing as the only acceptable form of satire on the internet these days is the surprisingly high-brow option of making Hitler be angry about something, we thought we’d have a go at it.

So here is Hitler being angry that Cream The Rabbit is not a playable character in Sonic 4.

Turned out OK, even though we lost interest a bit near the end as Windows Movie Maker’s amazing anti-logic started to wear us down.

The official Sonic 4 site is dripping with timers, as the SEGA of today loves doing that endless teasing thing to get children and teenagers who don’t know any better excited. There’s a trailer featuring literally ZERO gameplay footage up there at the moment.

And the plot is also revealed. You’ll never guess what’s happened.

We will be spending all of today making a video in which Hitler expresses his anger that Cream The Rabbit is not a playable character in Sonic 4. Can no one else have or do that idea, please? Thanks. What tool do people use for doing the subtitles?

Blimey, never thought we’d be typing those words in that particular order. Let’s try typing that again, and see how it feels…

Sonic The Hedgehog 4.

Felt pretty good. We’re probably supposed to be excited about this, but we’re going to hold off on the exclamation marks until we know who’s doing the development. There’s a chance it’s been outsourced to Backbone Entertainment, and we don’t want to be excited about something that’s going to turn out shit with button presses that lag half a second behind the action.

There are some screenshots and facts about Sonic 4 (typing felt nice) on Gamespot. We have not got around to reading any of the facts yet. We are too scared. We have not yet “come to terms” with this development.

VG247 comment-leavers point out that a trailer can be viewed over at Jeux Video. It shows literally THREE SECONDS of the new game and contains Comic Mischief.

The enemy is again attempting to rewrite history before the war is even over! Speaking to IGN and quoted by Eurogamer, Peter Dille, the enemy’s Senior Vice President of Marketing (Marketing = LIES), tried to blame stock shortages for the dismal showing of his console.

Peter, THERE WAS NO STOCK SHORTAGE. We were there. We remember what happened. It was only two-and-a-half years ago. We saw it happen. We documented it as it happened. Your pieces of shit were piled up in every shop and warehouse the length and breadth of this country. And America, we just didn’t bother saving all the American PS3 stockpile photos.

Lest we forget Manchester, England, Peter, where Virgin had 328 in stock shortly after launch. LEST WE FORGET THE BRAVE PEOPLE OF MANCHESTER, PETER, WHO RESISTED YOU THEN AND STILL RESIST YOU NOW – AND WILL RESIST AND RESIST AND RESIST UNTIL YOU QUIT. Is that a shortage, Peter? Is 328 a shortage? You must have a lot of everything if you think 328 is not very many.

That is A LIE. There was a GLUT, Peter. There was an enormous fucking GLUT, you fool. Anyway. With thanks to “Shine” for pointing out Sony’s latest embarrassingly crude attempt at retrospective reputation management.

LEST WE FORGET.

Time has not been kind to Ryo, but then he has spent the last eight years doing admin work for one of the shipping companies based in the docks, using a really old CRT monitor – hence what’s happened to his eyes.

Eight long, hard, real-time years.

Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing really is the ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ of the games world, thanks to the way it gives so many ageing, long-forgotten stars one more shot at the BIG TIME. If this game does well, Ryo will be able to pay off his mortgage and retire.

Here is Sumo Digital man and good interview–giver “SOL” explaining to some people on the internet why NiGHTS isn’t a playable/raceable character in SEGA & Sonic All-Stars. Believe it or not, games still MATTER to some people THAT MUCH. Crazy, isn’t it? People getting all bothered about pretend things. Madness.

We have left the “emoticon” HTML instructions in the text, so you can see where emotion was intended, and also corrected one possessive apostrophe error.

“Right then – first off… We didn’t forget NiGHTS!

“Just since you’ve all been trying to make him out from that blurry capture from Youtube, I figured we better put a nicer shot out! Consider this an exclusive (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

“We’ve given NiGHTS a very important role. He starts all the races, and also finishes them too! He also resides over Time Trial, whenever you set a new lap record, you’ll have NiGHTS flying along with you celebrating!

“I have to admit the main reason he’s in was after we saw your heartfelt pleas, especially those of DiGi and TRiPPY, we had to make sure NiGHTS was in and played an important role. After all, we really didn’t want them to burn all their collection now. So whilst he’s not playable, he very much made it in, and as a result of the huge amount of support for the character that you all showed.

“Does this mean that NiGHTS may not be in future DLC? Well who can say. That’s a question I can’t answer right now – it all depends on how well the game does (IMG:style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

“Anyway – cat’s out of the bag, so I figured we best make it official!

“Now, I can look forward to yet more ‘Don’t forget Flagman!’ posts I’m sure (IMG:style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)”

We propose a new INTERNET JOKE – when you say something that’s meant to be funny, you type “(IMG:style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)” so people know it was a joke and you weren’t just being an arse. It might be worth copying & pasting that into a Word document, to save on having to type it every time you need it.

NEW INTERNET JOKE TEST RUN:
Can’t wait to get this, it’s bound to be right at home on the Wii controller (IMG:style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

That odd “SEGA Zone” or indeed “Zone SEGA” thing that’s been doing the rounds on the internet is literally nothing to do with SEGA – you’ve been able to buy a generic version of it in Nintendo Wii white for a long time. And eBay is flooded with the things.

You’ve even been able to buy it for £15.99 for a long time, albeit without the SEGA games. But ask yourself this question – do you really need to play Columns again? And did you ever need to play Kid Chameleon in the first place?

“It looks bloody awful but I guess this is that base unit that SEGA is attaching its name to and sticking an extra chip inside of with a few MD classics. Pathetic, really” – Tomston.