Last week was (finally) got the new book editions of Love Pix'n the history of Sonic The Hedgehog dedicated to the twentieth anniversary of the mascot of SEGA. After several hours of careful reading and passionate, let me give you my impressions of this hot new book on the hedgehog super sonic. I present here the limited edition 2000 copies adorned with a magnificent cover with a golden appearance and cahoutchouc hot.
Publisher : Pix’n Love
Year : 2012
Pages : 296 pages
Price : 35 Euros
ISBN-10 : 2918272337
ISBN-13 : 978-2918272335
Dimensions : 21cm x 23cm (panoramic)
Shaping : Hardcover with gold tooling – Square back sewn / glued - Paper 170 grams – Impression 100% color
Extra(s) : Limited edition 2000 copies.
My impressions after a first reading :
Already beginning by the external appearance : it is a monster 296 pages weighing 1.5 kg ! Coverage is all blue, with a touch rubbery and the book title in golden hot. The Shaping of excellent invoice is back with a sewn / glued to maintain all without losing the son of the pages of time. Editions Pix'n Love excelled themselves in terms of quality and I who had had small problems with their previous works, I take my hat off when the choice of this qualitative direction.
Then we come to the content, because this is where I expected this book at the turn. The layout is very open, on, predominantly blue and made good use of the form “Sonic”. Found almost everywhere artworks, photos and quotes highlighted, it's really clean and nice to look. Again, congratulations, good job layout so.
The book is decomposed into 4 parties : History, games, the characters and finally the extras. If the last three are no real surprises party for me and simply describe (although some trivias to grace the descriptions are sometimes surprising), the section on the history I was really passionate. I have found lots of beautiful things. After a brief history of the company “Service Game”, it directly addresses the genesis of Sonic with biographies & interviews with its creators, of anecdotes about design, the development and commercialization. A great adventure to read and reread, I just loved !
Overall this book is a major success but it is not perfect in my eyes. I found that party “characters” took too much room (70 pages) while the part extras, it, was a bit sloppy (9 pages only). God knows it was possible to find a balance between the two (one page per character eg) to cram even more stuff : where are the scans of magazines / pubs / reviews of epochs (Japanese, U.S. and French) ? where are the scans of different jackets, where are the games and photos of Tiger Sonic goodies ? where are the screens versions Betas ? where are the comparisons between revisions ROMs, presentation of DLC ? where… I stop short but see, this is unfortunately absent from the book and it is a shame because it prevents it from reaching the rank of ultimate reference on Sonic The Hedgehog.
Ceci dit, it does not stop me strongly encourage you to get this wonderful book, because if you're a fan of Sega or Sonic the Hedgehog you will learn beautiful and will delight you from reading it.
The 3 Things I liked :
– The quality of finishing
– The overall design of the book
– Chapter history and interviews with Yuji Naka, Naoto Oshima and Takashi Lizuka.
The 3 things I like least :
– wait for its release for several months (paid in November 2011), even if ultimately it was really worth the trouble.
– The area reserved for characters who take up too much and not very interesting.
– The lack of real extras (scan of pubs, of jackets, pictures of goodies etc.…).
But This post does not end there, I take this opportunity to also add 3 gaming license to my collection, with 2 Korean new versions of Sonic The Hedgehog on the Megadrive (I now “fullset” Korean game) and Brazilian version of its suite, Sonic The Hedgehog 2, Powered by TecToy. Enjoy ! :
Sonic The Hedgehog (KOR Gold Label)
Sonic The Hedgehog (KOR Blue Label), in my opinion one of the best covers of this game !
Un petit Full-Set Made in Korea, the Sonic 1 for Megadrive:
Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (BR Red Label)
Comparison with other versions (US,EU,JPN,AS,AGE) :
jolie collection, Personal I have not really liked in this book is all the side games are awesome and perfect.
The historical part is by far the best thing about this book
I read your reviews for your blog (I had unfortunately not been seen for a while-___-) and this is true, I totally daccord with you on this point. It is very neutral and we feel the guidelines of SEGA Japan behind. After I confess that I was not upset over it unlike the rest.
Thank you for this comment. As feared my extremism and myself, missing some points. I also understand that the book would not fit into detail level games canceled (Sonic Marx/Xtreme, Sonic SatAM (ITS project presented by Sega in the U.S. at the time of the release of Sonic Spinball).
Let me turn your post on a fofo.
Indeed, not too many details about these projects canceled (2 pages and 3 only screenshots), but hey at least they are addressed. Once again, we would really have liked to have gone above and the rest I mentioned in my post rather than double-page spreads on Chaos or other secondary characters.
You must really be a fan of Sonic to buy all versions of the games on Mega Drive
Dans le lot j’ai Sonic 1,2,3, Sonic and Knuckles and the episode Spinball and Sonic in EU version 1,3 and in JP 2 en version ASIA (Well if I have fun Hack rather like Sonic Megamix or SFactor)
A nice collection, about the book and the famous disappointment (cancellation, change of direction etc. …) Yuji Naka's interview in the book “Mega Drive 25 anniversary” not too bullshit when he talks about Sonic.
Nice work! This is a great Article, I came across your site looking for the Korean Version of Sonic 1, and I didn’t know that there was so many! Do you have any tips on how to get a copy of any of them? I’m a collector from Brazil, and besides of collecting Tectoy’s versions, I’m trying to get all Sonic 1 versions. If you have interest in any games available only in Brazil, I can help you acquiring them.
PS: Sorry but I couldn’t find your email anywhere to contact you directly.