And that Ladies and Gentlemen was Summer Of Sonic 2010. Over, done with and out. What I’m going to suggest to everyone in terms of the main staff is that they when they have the chance write down an overview of the event from their own perspective. I’ve a few things to address, many of you are probably wondering “FOR THE LOVE OF TIKAL AAUK, wtf are you doing even up right now?” All I can say is I actually got up at 8am – I have things to do. Perhaps we can say that my biggest achievement at SOS 10 was to actually make it home, make myself a drink, sit down and watch TV for a good half hour before taking myself to bed. Not having Echo Hawk having to physically drag me in a state of delerium up a flight of stairs like last year.

Discoponies just collared me on msn funnily enough about this.

“I’m glad this year u seemed to think about ur own well being too. U seemed less prone to a stroke.”
“You missed some s***.”
“Oh god.”

Firstly thanks to all the staff, too many to name here, for their hard work and their dedication to the cause. Whether you enjoyed the heck out of Summer of Sonic 2010 (the majority) or thought it was really boring and run by “nerds with egos” (Christ, what else do we have to put on to make you lot not “bored”?!?) the team worked like Trojans under some very difficult circumstances which I’ll get into in a sec. Anyone who thinks “oh its been organised really poorly” doesn’t know the whole story.

We actually had an absolute nightmare with the setup, as all of us arrived Friday to find that the venue had very kindly not yet been cleared out of all the other furniture which rather prevented us from doing much for many hours. Amazingly we did actually manage to get everything up and working, the net was a bit fragile but working, we had all the audio and video ready and set up, the furniture was in place, C40 had done their mini-rehersal and we left late on Friday night with myself, Blake, Echo and bmn being the last to go, ready to finalise making things pretty in the morning due to the lack of time for it with the clean out leaving venue staff to finalise the tidying.

When we came back in the morning… our tech kit was gone. The laptops, and HD camera which were left in the “secured” venue and belonging to Rory/Roareye had vanished without a trace. You can imagine how we felt at this point; Rory despite being devastated insisted the most important thing was we somehow got everything set up again. And it’s that kind of attitude that shows you what a cool guy he is – caring more about the greater good of the con. So how Ian/bmn, Jay/Discoponies (who created all the snazzy video idents and things) and a couple of others somehow managed to get things set up again with a borrowed computer that was frankly rubbish in the time we had I have no idea. Because of all this we didn’t have the opportunity to make the venue as pretty as we’d've liked. I had some awesome ASR wall banners that never saw the light of day and a bunch of posters that should’ve been out and around.

Speaking of The Pavilion itself…don’t get me started on air-con situation and trust me we were just as hot.

Regarding Sonic 4 and Colours – unfortunately those were all the machines we could get, S4 and Colours Wii were on special machines and those were all that were available, the fact that the sync button on the Wii apparently was broken facilitating an emergency Gamecube controller backup didn’t help matters but the vast majority of people I think that played it really enjoyed the experience.

So perhaps we can say that SOS was a triumph in the face of some extreme advercity? For Sonic The Hedgehog 4 Episode I there was certainly a BIG reaction to it, and hey that was the E3 build so didn’t have the tweaks done to it. People were really enjoying Colours, the shop did a very steady turn over – and if you think I see a penny of that boy are you wrong! The art corner was VERY busy as before, lots of the more serious artists were very interested indeed in Nigel Dobbyn’s clinics. The cosplay was off the hook this year, how many people did we have in the end? 20-ish? Who’d've thought Shadow would be the most cosplayed character?! And can people now drop last years “you don’t know who Purge is” nonsense on the basis I twigged Sketch Turner and Roadkill before you. Incidentally there was an additional prize to that which I shall have to get to the devious Dr. Eggman.

I think I won the battle of the t-shirts this year, though only because no one saw Jay’s sparkly Tails sprite t-shirt until the end.

The Tails Doll made a spectacular return of course (YouTube of that later), Vger/Wentos was surprised with his forfeit, the Buzzbombers quiz proved very entertaining: if proving that T-Bird and Dreadknux are dirty liars and that Johnny Gioeli doesn’t know as much about Jun Senoue as he should. The Wrecks Factor Live had some rather rousing performances, including Mini-T surprising everybody with a heck of a performance of the Sonic Underground theme. An All-Stars Racing World Champion was crowned and people enjoyed playing 8 player networked games, Sonic 1, Sonic 2, Sonic Heroes, Sonic Unleashed and just generally interacting with other Sonic fans.

Okay, so the hermit crabs went up the spout. Yeah, considering how much effort it took to actually get hold of those my heartfelt thanks to you all for promptly nicking them all.

Oh yes, and HELLO – we had CRUSH FRIGGIN’ 40? Jun and Johnny had a superb Q&A hosted by T-Bird, which was actually very revealing. Jun treated everyone to some “Afternoon Tea”, a 20 minute individual set with the surprise addition of Sonic The Hedgehog 4 Japan Trip competition entrants Freya and The Divas singing Escape From The City before C40 TORE DOWN THE HOUSE with their set. Gotta say, as being partly responsible for writing that set it sounded great. I say sounded as I never got to see it. *Sob* Hey, someone had to start de-rigging everything. So where’s the YouTube videos guys? Some of us want to see.

More individual stories from the event to follow, including a video from Frobman we were not able to show due to the kit theft – we’ll let you know more on what happens with that. In the future I’ll also be asking you guys what you want for Summer of Sonic 2011 – yes, 2011. As if you missed myself and Svend’s last announcement its going to be held on the first Saturday after Sonic’s 20th Birthday on June 25th 2011! Have a think of what you might want, keep an eye out for the post then when we ask tell us what you’re after (besides the obvious… bigger, cooler, refreshments) that’ll go up Monday I think.

For now… I’m off to have a lie down and rest the laundry list of injuries I picked up.

I’ll let Dreadknux fill you in on the details for ease.:

By now you’ve probably got a good idea as to how absolutely awesome this year’s Summer of Sonic convention is going to be. 1000-person venue. Nigel Dobbyn. Crush 40. Sonic 4. Free goodies. That’s only the tip of the iceberg, ladies and gentlemen – we have a lot more to announce besides, that will make SoS10 an unforgettable event.

With such a great lineup, it’s only natural to expect a lot of people to come through those Pavilion doors on the 7th August. To help make your entry into the Summer of Sonic that much easier, I am proud to announce the launch of our registrations website, which will allow you to place an order for tickets in advance of the big day.

What are the benefits of registering early on the website, instead of just heading straight to the venue? It saves time for both you and the Summer of Sonic staff – on entry, you will be asked to provide the doormen with your name, address and other details so that if an incident happens during the day, we can contact you easily and efficiently. This process does impact the length of time you could be standing in line outside, waiting to get in.

Advance registration gives you the opportunity to send us all of the details that you would normally leave on the door via our website, thus speeding up your entry. The other clear benefit is that, for the first hour of the Summer of Sonic venue opening, we will only be accepting entry for those holding a valid, already-registered ticket.

So how do you get to do this? Simply visit our registration website at http://register.summerofsonic.com/ – fill in your details and follow the instructions. Once submitted, your details will go through a vetting process before being accepted. Accepted registered applicants will be sent details of their ticket, to print off and take to the venue to be hole-punched.

Please note that no tampering of your ticket is allowed, whatsoever. If you modify it in any way, you will be refused entry. And nobody wants to wait a whole hour when you could be so close to being one of the first people to see the sights!

Entry to the Summer of Sonic convention – including advance registration – is subject to our Terms and Conditions, which you must read and accept before being allowed access. Please take the time to understand these terms as soon as you can.

Now, get registering and breathe easy – you’re going to the Summer of Sonic!

So who’s going? This is in addition to an earlier post by me where we revealed the SOS drawstring bag!

I hear tell on the grapevine that despite my wonderous efforts and securing you very nice lanyards and Archie comics for free apparently there are apparently still fans out there STILL wanting more. Honestly, some people are never satisfied no matter what you give them. Who do you think you are, the Sonic fanba- oh… wait. That’d be right wouldn’t it. Anyway when I said the lanyard was the last freebie item…. I LIEEEEEED.

We thought it’d be rather nice if you had something to carry around your SOS stuff in so let me present to you the SOS 10 drawstring bag, complete with Sonic and a special black cutout version of the SOS logo. It’s orange and hemmed in black, again, available to attendees whilst stocks last.

Please note as Sonic is lineart style this means Sonic’s eyes are also orange.

Yeah, go nuts with that one…

Photo courtesy of TRiPPY over at NiGHTSintoDreams.com.

Best caption will win a SEGA lip balm and some glitter. Okay maybe not the glitter. Bung us a comment and the best one will win.

We’ve a fair few Radio Redux shows coming your way, a real phalanx of them actually including an RRPlay exclusive in the next 24 hours courtesy of Urtheart’s Boombox (includes competition). Last week saw us record TWO shows on SEGASonic Radio as we once again covered the 6 o’clock slot. Really now, come on… its getting ridiculous. So ridiculous the last time I did it I vowed there would be consequences if Radio Redux had to step in to the breach AGAIN.

Radio Redux #508 – The Mystery Sonic Wrecks Theatre 3000 Show
Featuring: ArchangelUK, Echo Hawk, Dreadknux & Roareye Black
Now available on RSS, iTunes, Direct Download and streaming on RRPlay.

No Sonic Hour? No T-Time? Are Radio Redux going to have to cover again? The answer is yes, and AAUK did threaten to do a show taking the mickey out of the AWOL Sonic Hour if he had to cover again… and he always keeps his word. Thus we’re transported back to 2005 and the young Joscelyne brothers talk about Argos, the mysterious Hatman and Super Ted, all whilst AAUK and Echo Hawk comment over the top of it Mystery Science Theatre 3000 style!

I’ve just come back from the MCM Expo in London, and apart from vowing never to go again and getting a goody bag the size of a small house at least myself and Echo got to hang out with Bentley Jones as well as TRiPPY, Vger, Dan Dyer, Dreadknux, T-Bird, Nemain and Sonic Yoda. Umiyuri (I think) ran past us dressed in a pink something – completely ignoring us, cheers Kate – to tackleglomp Bentley. Heck I even bumped into my former SEGA Community cohort Martin, Turtlegirl from GirlGamers and even Alzari himself the irrepressible DC!

I won’t bore you to death over the cosplay details, we did see a Sonic, a small Shadow (who was later seen adorned with a Hollow mask from Bleach and a samurai sword in what must be the worst crossover idea in the history of forever) and Bayonetta and photos of her and Sonic will be going up on the SOE Blog next week courtesy of T-Bird.

But yes sadly the MCM Expo was a bit of a let down, ignoring the fact that the amount of people there was RIDICULOUS I’ve actually learnt a lot as to how NOT to do a convention. The “host” for the stage area bored everyone to death, delayed everything and people began to leave. Luckily this meant we worked our way to the front where we patiently waited through a couple of interview panels. It was coming up to the Guinness World Record attempt on DS play… which everyone needed to sign up for. Now myself and Echo had left our DS’s at home, so we were really pleased when we and anyone else who didn’t have a DS were essentially asked to GO AWAY.

Yup, we were actually asked to leave whilst they did this. We obliged, half way out in a throng of people the idiot got back on the mike to hurriedly tell people if they were waiting for Bentley then they could indeed stay, which I think was Dreadknux’s doing. Thankfully for the Expo Idiot he wasn’t looking directly at me because the look I shot him as I turned around WOULD have killed him, Svend WAS looking at me and flinched. In fact I did vocalise my desire to shove the lighting gantry up the chap’s rectum. Ahem.

Under The Gun rocking out with motion blurrrrrr

Eventually Bentley came onstage and it soon became apparent that whilst the guys on stage were rocking the stage set-up was rocky. In fact we felt a bit sorry for everyone concerned really, the set was monkeyed around with, whoever was working the levels really did a piss poor job, they were supposed to announce the tracks and they didn’t. The big thing was the levels though which were shot, with Under The Gun louder than Bentley was and the feedback was non-existent to the stage so they were essentially performing blind. Way to go MCM. In fact T-Bird, who is a close friend of Under The Gun actually went up to the guy half way through to ask him what the hell he was playing at and who apparently gave him a don’t-really-care like response. Awesome.

Performing “So Much More…”

Myself and my posse then went behind the scenes after the set to chat to Bentley and UTG which was awesome – Echo and Bentley had a proper chance to hang out and chat face-to-face which they sadly weren’t able to do at Summer of Sonic 2009 which was cool.

So what did we actually learn about WE R ANIMADE? Well we learnt that the sound is MUCH more rocky and heavier than previous, Nick Jennison and UTG appear to be much more involved following their appearance on “So Much More” – which featured in the set and got a surprisingly big reaction.  Some anime themes look like they’ll be featuring, a version of the Macross Plus theme was played in the set – and I know for a fact that a reinterpretation of another well known and popular anime series theme will likely be on it (mainly as I’ve had an early mix of the track for ages) but I won’t tell you want that is – its a surprise.  We know that fan involvement will play a part and we know that TRiPPY’s art is awesome. Bentley was actually wearing Studio Imagni badges on his stage gear in a really nice and classy touch. Bentley also styled his hair all anime-like for the performance. I don’t think its gonna stay that way somehow…

TRiPPY’s awesome outfit that I shall forever term “The Clockwork Bride”

Its a pity I can’t go back tomorrow to be honest as everything will be sorted and it ‘d be quite a performance but regardless of the organisational faux pas on the Expo’s front, what we gathered from the actual sound is that WE R ANIMADE is gonna be awesome. Its just a pity the Excel Centre wasn’t.