What birthday is complete without a cake to celebrate? Chef Amy has taken the time to bake a delicious treat for Sonic’s 19th Anniversary, and you can tell by the look on the hedgehog’s face that he’s very excited to have a slice! Not as much as Chip though, who has fallen in love with the chocolatey goodness! Excellent work, Alexandra!

This awesome sketch drawing of Sonic wielding Caliburn from Sonic and the Black Knight comes straight from the pencils of avid Sonic fan Frida Danmo. We’re not sure if the Medieval Wii adventure is Frida’s favourite Sonic title, but it’s certainly a game that provides lots of inspiration for artwork! If the Knights of the Round Table were here, they would surely commend you… after a round of swordplay, of course.

Woah! Amy Rose is checking out a book and looks totally engrossed in its contents. Perhaps she’s seen another news story about Sonic saving the world? Could Dr. Eggman have hijacked the printing press and used it as his own propaganda vehicle for the Eggman Empire? Or maybe it’s an advert for Shadow-branded deodorant (yes, after Sonic The Hedgehog he’s been busy with other jobs)?

Who knows, but we do know that this is a great picture, drawn by HelenBaby and posted here for you to enjoy. Check out HelenBaby’s DeviantArt page here.

KirbyLinkFan submitted not one, not two, but three lovely drawings of the Triple Threat – Sonic, Tails and Knuckles. Sonic looks ready for action with Chaos Emerald in hand, Tails seems quite proud of himself (maybe he’s built some super-gadget that we can’t see), while Knuckles is quite content being his solitary, moody self. That echidna doesn’t chuckle, don’t you know. Great work!

It’s time to go crazy kids!

It is our utmost pleasure to announce that the Summer of Sonic will play host to the legendary rock group CRUSH 40 at this years’ convention!

Both Johnny Gioeli and Jun Senoue will be joining our already incredible roster for the day, and you, the fans will have the rare opportunity to come along and meet the band members!

Johnny Gioeli is no stranger to the world of rock, and has blown away audiences for nearly twenty years with his incredible vocals, fronting acts such as Hardline and Axel Rudi Pell. Teaming up with Jun Senoue to form Sons of Angels, they later became Crush 40. Gioeli’s powering voice has become synonymous, with a huge number of Sonic the Hedgehog title tracks including Open Your Heart (Sonic Adventure), Live & Learn (Sonic Adventure 2) and I Am…All Of Me (Shadow the Hedgehog).

Jun Senoue is one of the most influential composers in the Sonic the Hedgehog universe, having worked on Sonic titles as early as 1993. Sound directing some of the most prolific soundtracks to date including the Sonic Adventure series, Sonic Heroes and Sonic & the Black Knight to mention but a few, Senoue has become infamous for his musical direction as well as his musical prowess, with his trademark guitar work becoming the staple of countless Sonic the Hedgehog titles. Not only this, Senoue is the composer for the soon-to-be-released title Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1. The double threat of Gioeli and Senoue as Crush 40 has literally redefined the music to Sonic the Hedgehog games as we know it.

Jun and Johnny will also be answering any questions you might have in a Crush 40 Q&A event on stage. They will also be available for a quick chat in the afternoon in a meet and greet session, where you can bring along your Crush 40 memorabilia to have signed!

Not only this, but we are delighted that Crush 40 will be treating Summer of Sonic fans to a very special Summer of Sonic Crush 40 performance on stage at the end of the show, playing a selection of fan-favourites that will rock you to your core!

You’re not going to want to miss this year’s convention…it truly will be way past cool!

Isn’t life grand, you announce an awesome freebie for everyone, namely that they’re going to get some sort of free Archie comic* and then people start asking what else they’re getting. Tsk. Honestly. There’s no pleasing some people.

As a result we’ve all gone on strike. T-Bird is refusing to wear his hat, Urtheart’s refusing to be heartless, Flyboy Fox is presently chained to the railings outside Downing Street (well everybody needs a hobby I guess), Vger’s so annoyed he’s flown all the way to Japan to get away from you all, and Svend got so annoyed he cut off his long flowing danish locks in protest.

Shirt and neck not included

Okay, we’re kind of greatful for that one, but still its all your fault. I almost feel like not giving you this Summer of Sonic lanyard, which will be available whilst stocks last at the event.  This 20mm wide nylon double sided printed SOS lanyard is smooth as silk and available in SOS orange. Ideal for putting your (forthcoming!) ticket on – its almost as if I planned it somehow.

So there we go, something else we’re giving you.

That’s it, its all over, nothing more to see here.

….

Honest.

*I have been asked if the current nonsense over in the US – you know what I’m talking about – will affect the giveaway of the comics. The answer is absolutely not.

Sonic fans get your driving gloves on for it is time to take the pedal to the metal for Summer of Sonic’s Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing Tournament. That’s right, we at Summer of Sonic will be giving you the chance to compete for the honour and privilege of being the S&SASR World Champion – a nice little trophy to add to your Sonic collection and we may just have some other prizes in-store too so keep an eye out for a future announcement.

That’s all fine and dandy Shadzter but what format will the tournament be held in and just what version will you be using? Glad you asked! The tournament will be played on Xbox 360 pods kindly donated by Microsoft who are part-sponsoring the games section of Summer of Sonic. The qualifiers will be held in Time Trial mode where you will be challenged to earn the best time possible in a track we’ll be choosing at the event, the players with the best times (number of players to be determined) will be going through to the knockout finals later in the day where they will race for victory.

So if you’re up for some racing action then come and join me and the games staff at SoS’s Games Zone, we look forward to seeing you!

This year’s Summer of Sonic is already proving to be an interesting challenge for everyone – bigger and better is…better but has some growing pains along for the ride. In awesome news we’re already aware that an even bigger foreign quota of fans will be descending on London this year than ever before.  I know people are also asking about tickets – all I can say there is that we’re just waiting on some T&Cs and then we’ll be ready to rock and roll. We’ve also got a fair few things that will excite you tremendously and wonder just how on earth we’ve been able to do all this – the Archie announcement was just the tip of the iceberg.

Eat your greens or they'll sink the Titanic...

Possibly an iceberg lettuce, not quite sure at this point.

The thing that has surprised me the most though is we’ve actually started getting job applications for Summer of Sonic. It turns out there’s a fair few of you who’d like to work the event, either for work experience or just for the honour of being involved in it – which says a lot about how people view the event.

Now I’ve had CV’s and all sorts of requests sent to me and I’ve not had a chance to reply as yet. We at SOS are deeply touched by these requests however we must decline, as we’ve already got a large team who’ll be more than capable of carrying out all the duties alloted to them. They’re doing a lot more this year as everyone’s tired of me half-killing myself (Mrs AAUK especially) and there will be specific teams carrying out tasks as has already been talked about on the staff page.

In fact the sheer size of the event means that the community guys might even be contracted for the day, something we’re still confirming.

So thanks to all of you for your interest, but we’d rather you enjoyed the event yourselves – it should be quite something.

Our first piece of artwork added to the Spotlight, and what a corker! Coming from the winner of the art competition in last year’s Summer of Sonic convention, syaming-li has created a fantastic group piece celebrating Sonic’s 19th birthday. If that’s how much fun everyone has at the blur blur’s nineteenth, we can’t wait to see what will happen at the hero’s big 2-0 next year…

Take a look at this picture on syaming-li’s own Deviantart page, here.

Apologies for the delay, but now the Spotlight is open and ready to rock and roll! If you have some Sonic the Hedgehog talent in your little fingers, we’d like to see it! Submit your fan artwork, homemade videos, fan games, photos and other works and we’ll try our best to put them all up on this part of the website.

If you’re really eager to make something before the event kicks off, then this is the perfect place to have your stuff shown off. On the other hand, if you can’t make it to the Summer of Sonic 2010 for whatever reason you can still have a presence by having something published here! If the mood takes you, you can even make a little “Sorry I Can’t Be There…” video. Anything goes here.

Well, not exactly everything… you know what I mean.

So, how do you get your stuff placed here, I hear you ask? Simply grab your work (if it’s an image, please ensure it is saved with a popular filetype extension – PNG, JPG, GIF for example – and make sure it’s not too big in filesize), attach it to an email or send us a Youtube link (or other such information) to summerofsonic@yahoo.com.

Make the subject of your email “Spotlight” and include your Name, Nickname (if you’d rather not use your real name), Email Address and any Website Link you might want us to reference. Please note that we cannot guarantee every submission will be published on this website (although we will certainly try), and that original fan works published here cannot be re-used for any contest at the Summer of Sonic convention. Similarly, we cannot guarantee that works published here will be on show at the convention itself.

Now, have fun, and send us your best!