TSS: Sonic Community Win SEGA’s Needlemouse Challenge

[Dreadknux]

It’s been a very long four days for Sonic fans everywhere thanks to SEGA’s Project Needlemouse Character Countdown. Starved for information about the game with naught but a teaser trailer and rumours of it possibly being a downloadable title for 360 and PS3 to go on, fans leapt on SEGA’s challenge to whittle down a frankly ridiculous list of possible playable characters. The first two challenges were easy with fans racking up 250 correct replies on SEGA’s blog and Facebook page in a matter of hours. The third day was harder with the target of 1000 answers on SEGA’s forum failing to be reached.

In the final challenge yesterday SEGA were asking for a mammoth 1250 correct answers to be posted to their Twitter account or for SEGA or Needlemouse to reach the trending topic list. It was a long night with an extraordinary effort put in by everyone to push for the goal. Many fans had never used Twitter before and set up an account just for this challenge. Others helped members struggling to Tweet correctly by showing them how. It wasn’t long before Twitter was drown under a wave of #SEGA and #Needlemouse posts. SEGA offered words of encouragement and for a short period we were actually posting more topics per minute than some of the top 10 trending topics. It was a valiant effort but while we never made the trending topics list we still won. At around 7am GMT SEGA gave us the word:

Congratulations everyone! 1,250+ Correct Responses reached! We’ll see you guys tomorrow morning on the SEGA Blogs for the final update

We won! Now I don’t usually post “Announcements or Updates” here at the Stadium but as a part of this challenge all week and being on the frontlines last night I felt compelled to document our desperate struggle. More importantly I wanted to say a huge “Thank You” to everyone who helped out this week in any way shape or form. Thanks to everyone who answered any of the questions, anyone who asked friends and family to help, anyone who joined a forum, Facebook or Twitter just to lend a helping hand and to anyone who tirelessly spammed Twitter last night.

I’ve no idea exactly what SEGA have planned to reveal later today. We’re getting the final playable character list, that’s a given. But the prize for winning three bonus points? That’s still a mystery. It could be anything from another teaser trailer, a cryptic screenshot to a full on Project Needlemouse unveiling with bells, whistles and everything. But in a way it doesn’t really matter what we’ve won. To me what’s important is how we won. The Sonic Community banded together for a single cause and showed SEGA emphatically that we still care about the blue hedgehog. Forget all the internet drama and stupidity; what we’ve done this week is justify SEGA’s decision to finally cater a Sonic game to his hardcore fan base. And judging by what I’ve seen this week I think the videogame community as a whole would struggle to find another community as hardcore and as loyal as us.

I’m going to leave you with this YouTube video which was posted by SEGA on Twitter last night. The man in the video encompasses the strength, loyalty and the hardcore nature of SEGA fans all over the globe. If you’ve never seen him before you’re in for a treat. It is of course, the incomparable Segata Sanshiro!

Click here to view the embedded video.

It’s been a very long four days for Sonic fans everywhere thanks to SEGA’s Project Needlemouse Character Countdown. Starved for information about the game with naught but a teaser trailer and rumours of it possibly being a downloadable title for 360 and PS3 to go on, fans leapt on SEGA’s challenge to whittle down a frankly ridiculous list of possible playable characters. The first two challenges were easy with fans racking up 250 correct replies to SEGA’s blog and Facebook page in a matter of hours. The third day was harder with the target of 1000 answers on SEGA’s forum failing to be reached.

In the final challenge yesterday SEGA were asking for a mammoth 1250 correct answers to be posted to their Twitter page or for SEGA or Needlemouse to reach the trending topic list. It was a long night with an extraordinary effort put in by everyone to push for the goal. Many fans had never used Twitter before and set up an account just for this challenge. Others helped members struggling to Tweet correctly and Twitter was drown under a wave of #SEGA and #Needlemouse posts. SEGA offered words of encouragement and for a short period we were actually posting more topics per minute than other topics on the list. It was a valiant effort but while we never made the trending topics list we still won. At around 7am GMT SEGA gave us the word:

Congratulations everyone! 1,250+ Correct Responses reached! We’ll see you guys tomorrow morning on the SEGA Blogs for the final update

We won! Now I don’t usually post “Announcements or Updates” here at the Stadium but as a part of this challenge all week and being on the frontlines last night I felt compelled to document our desperate struggle. More importantly I wanted to say a huge “Thank You” to everyone who helped out this week in any way shape or form. Thanks to everyone who answered any of the questions, anyone who asked friends and family to help, anyone who joined a forum, Facebok or Twitter just to lend a helping hand and to anyone who tirelessly spammed Twitter last night.

I’ve no idea exactly what SEGA have planned to reveal later today. We’re getting the final playable character list, that’s a given. But the prize for winning three bonus points? That’s still a mystery. It could be anything from another teaser trailer, a cryptic screenshot to a full on Project Needlemouse unveiling with bells, whistles and everything. But in a way it doesn’t really matter what we’ve won. To me what’s important is how we won. The Sonic Community banded together for a single cause and showed SEGA emphatically that we still care about the blue hedgehog. Forget all the internet drama and stupidity; what we’ve done this week is justify SEGA’s decision to finally cater a Sonic game to his hardcore fan base. And judging by what I’ve seen this week I think the videogame community as a whole would struggle to find another community as hardcore and as loyal as us.

I’m going to leave you with this YouTube video which was posted by SEGA on Twitter last night. The man in the video encompasses the strength, loyalty and the hardcore nature of SEGA fans all over the globe. If you’ve never seen him before you’re in for a treat. It is of course, the incomparable Segata Sanshiro!

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[Frozen Nitrogen]

And it was like herding cats, too.

Still: we are teh winnars!