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Sonic the Hedgehog Encyclo-Speed-ia (Dark Horse Books)


Graystripe2000

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Somewhere deep inside in my darkest of hearts , I'm dissapointed it's Ian Flynn writing this and not Pontac and Graff.
Aren't they the official game writers now? I'd LOVE to see those clowns struggle to say anything meaningful about the franchise.
"Haha, Eggman, has like, "Egg" in his name, haha. I wonder if he eats eggs? When he eats eggs, would he be like "Oh, an Egg. I have Egg in my name. I must eat it now. " That would be funny, Lol. How many people have Egg in their name? Oh, I know one Egbert. I wonder if he eats eggs?"

So, the En-speed-opo-speed-ia.
Place your bets wether
A ) Sonic Team had any real impact on this or it's just Iizuka stamping his "What, who? Sure, whatever" seal of approval on everything.

B ) The VERY FIRST game released after the encyclopodia will already contradict half the book. Thus cementing Ian Flynn's status as Sonic Team's janitor eternally mopping up the mess they make. Bonus points if the contradictions come from utterly irrelevant side details.

C ) Bonus points if this book will be written from a meta perspective rather then in-universe.
"How did Sonic and Tails meet and become friends? Well, in late 1991, Sonic Team wanted to include a second playable character in the next game in production, 1992's Sonic 2 for the Sega Genesis (Megadrive overseas) from 1989 (Which is the year thar came after the year 1988). So Tails was made. So the second player can play a second character. Which is Tails.
So is main player character "Sonic" friends with 2nd player character "Tails"? "What, who? Sure, whatever" "


But yeah, I'll probably buy it. Bitter snarking is the most fun I get out of this franchise at this point.
Shame Ian Flynn is actually compotent and cares, the book might be halfway decent now.

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16 hours ago, CommodoreGX said:

I'm not a fan of Ian Flynn's prose

 

15 hours ago, Solister said:

I'm not much familiar with Ian's writing as I guess not much of Sonic comics were ever sold in my country. I wonder if it would be any better than Sonic News Network or Sonic Retro,

 

9 hours ago, Badnik Mechanic said:

Just because the fact Flynn is writing it is really going to expose how much of this series he does know. And if it's just going to be a surface level knowledge which I suspect it might be.

You guys do know that this is probably going to be like actual material Sega gave him right? Like he's not just pulling stuff from memory this is Sega's official Sonic guidebook.

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21 hours ago, Silvereyes said:

The link just takes me to a Sonic pen set, can't see anything about a new encyclopedia.

Same here. I've also tried manually searching for the book on Amazon Uk and it turned up nothing.

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17 hours ago, Roger_van_der_weide said:

Somewhere deep inside in my darkest of hearts , I'm dissapointed it's Ian Flynn writing this and not Pontac and Graff.
Aren't they the official game writers now? I'd LOVE to see those clowns struggle to say anything meaningful about the franchise.

Apparently, Pontac and Graff stopped working for Sonic Team after Team Sonic Racing, I'm pretty sure nobody, (especially me) will them.

Their "writing" is a pox on humanity.

17 hours ago, Roger_van_der_weide said:

Place your bets wether
A ) Sonic Team had any real impact on this or it's just Iizuka stamping his "What, who? Sure, whatever" seal of approval on everything.

I dare to say that we'll see this.

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I've really wanted them to lay out the lore they have, even if it sucks or has retcons. There's just way too many unexplained "How’s" and "Why's" right now. Hopefully it has anything at all about lore and isnt just things we already know.

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13 hours ago, SBR2 said:

You guys do know that this is probably going to be like actual material Sega gave him right? Like he's not just pulling stuff from memory this is Sega's official Sonic guidebook.

Then why even hire him? Literally anyone could write it and produce the same final product if that's the case.

I'm under no doubt that there will be a lot of "pre-approved" information given.

But I would have hoped that there would be some original work and some research going into this than just republished brief materials.

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22 hours ago, Roger_van_der_weide said:

Somewhere deep inside in my darkest of hearts , I'm dissapointed it's Ian Flynn writing this and not Pontac and Graff.
Aren't they the official game writers now? I'd LOVE to see those clowns struggle to say anything meaningful about the franchise.
"Haha, Eggman, has like, "Egg" in his name, haha. I wonder if he eats eggs? When he eats eggs, would he be like "Oh, an Egg. I have Egg in my name. I must eat it now. " That would be funny, Lol. How many people have Egg in their name? Oh, I know one Egbert. I wonder if he eats eggs?"

It's revealed that Baldy McNosehair is Eggman's actual birthname.

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6 hours ago, Badnik Mechanic said:

Then why even hire him? Literally anyone could write it and produce the same final product if that's the case.

I'm under no doubt that there will be a lot of "pre-approved" information given.

But I would have hoped that there would be some original work and some research going into this than just republished brief materials.

Maybe because Ian has proved himself over 13+ years of writing for the comic, Sonic Boom, proved how versatile he can be (what with writing for several comic series at the same time) and is certainly more than able to take that task ? Writing a book like this is not something anyone could do.

I trust him far more on Sonic knowledge than Pontac and Graff; for example.

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Just now, Adamis said:

Maybe because Ian has proved himself over 13+ years of writing for the comic, Sonic Boom, proved how versatile he can be (what with writing for several comic series at the same time) and is certainly more than able to take that task ? Writing a book like this is not something anyone could do.

I trust him far more on Sonic knowledge than Pontac and Graff; for example.

Look at what I'm replying in response to...

If all he's doing is regurgitating pre approved material then literally anyone can write the book.

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I agree with the above statement. That be like in grad school. Sure we could hand notes off to anyone to write a paper but not everyone is going to write the preapproved material the same. Some are lucky to whip out a C to B paper but some with some sort of writing backing and knowledge of the subject already can make an A.

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15 hours ago, Adamis said:

No. Not everyone can write for an official book, that's expected to be well-written. What you're saying is disrespectful to actual writers.

You can't take random notes, put them together in InDesign and call it a day, to release such a book.

Plus, that same logic is why Pontac and Graff have such a poor reputation when it comes to writing for the games while Flynn is more well received by contrast due to knowing the games and characters more intimately.

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  • 1 month later...
On 9/13/2020 at 12:21 PM, Sonictrainer said:

How come no one posted the book's cover?

81S2bNtOYnL.jpg

I am gong to order this. I wonder if it will contain characters from the Archie comics or just the games? 

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I can’t find it on Amazon. Is SEGA holding it back for the 30th Anniversary? 

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 1 year later...

I saw this was being talked about in status updates, but figured this was worth a bump since I know it's something people are interested in. In the off-chance you want to go into it blind, then this is your warning to steer clear.

 

Twitter thread of an early look at the book from artist Gigi Dutreix. She works at a comic shop so Dark Horse seemed to already have some copies ready to go for the direct market, as Amazon (which is not the direct market) currently has the book set for December 14. There are reportedly shipping delays into January, but that sounds mostly like an Amazon thing and nothing new, so let's not go nuts with the conspiracy theories they were looking to slap something new in. Hell, the book was in the works for two years and they may well have accounted for upcoming games already but also may not have included them, so I wouldn't count on any big info.

 

It's mostly a rundown of the games apparently, including obscure stuff and some neat notes on the production. It looks pretty cool and has great presentation, but not really my thing unfortunately (I prefer straight-up art books). Seems like it'll be nice for other folks though.

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It's not my thing either, it looks like a collector of everything but it really doesn't add anything that we didn't know already. I don't need it but cool for people who do want to know more about Sonic. Still wish we got some lore and continuity details but okay, I guess we are never getting those if it's not here.

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  • The title was changed to Sonic the Hedgehog Encyclo-Speed-ia (Dark Horse Books)

Yeah, figured that's what this would end up being. I don't blame people for expecting something more though - the blurb did say it would be a "Dive deep into the extensive lore and exhaustive detail of each game in Sonic's ever-expanding universe". It just didn't seem realistic SEGA would actually think a book detailing that stuff was necessary, and I'm inclined to never take Sonic advertising at face value. At least the Sonic wiki is free. Still looks like it'll be a fun read though.

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So question to those who have the book: is there a single new information in there that I can't find right now on Sonic Wiki or Retro?

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So... it's a greatest hits compilation, instead of a proper fucking encyclopedia.

sigh

Was... was I wrong to expect something else? Probably was, wasn't I? 

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Well, it does seem like it's a fairly extensive if it includes stuff like Wakku Wakku Sonic Patrol Car and other Japanese exclusive stuff. It's an encyclopedia, it's just not in-universe one, like the Archie one was. Problem is the blurb emphasizes how much it delves into the story more than it appears it actually does.

"This tome leaves no stone unturned, showcasing in-depth looks at the characters, settings, and stories from each exciting installment!

I assume this means: Sonic Channel profiles, iconic game locations, and brief recaps of the game's plots. And some fun facts that you may or may not already know.

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Well, tbh for what we have seen it does contain "lore" as part of what they talk about, as we can see stuff like the World Ring and the Secret Ring character. What it doesn't do is trying to link all this in a cohesive single canon. In a way, we seem to have some lore, but not "the canon" (except by saying "Everything is canon", canonising that yes, Big was in fact in Secret Ring lol). So I suppose that from their point of view, it's not that misleading. It can be a bummer for us, tho, but eh.

Also, Erazor Djinn wanted to conquer Sonic's world ? I did not remember that.

 

( And Flynn seems to have had a lot of fun writing the character description lol )

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Yeah, you can really see Ian's tongue-in-cheek touch in stuff like the intro to the Popcorn Shop description.

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Urgh, yeah, I ain't buying this.
This is nothing like the actual story encyclopodia I hoped for at all and looks EXACTLY like the derpy "Sonic 2 is videogame from 1992. It has Tails in it. Here's 5 pages of screenshots" meta garbage I feared for.
I ain't spending so much money for a bunch of pages with screenshots, easy accesible official art with some Captain obvious descriptions.

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