Its half five in the morning of the day before, the day before SOS and I’m just writing a quick blog on here despite being completely messed up by tiredness, energy drinks and headache tablets to talk about something I actually focused on during last week’s Radio Redux.  Namely… your names.

Now after the introduction at SOS I’d at least expect you to recognise me or Dreadknux, you might well want to come up and say hello. You might even be the big man on campus, er, the forums and want to talk to as many familiar people as possible from Retro, the SSMB, Entherial Online, etc.  Well here’s the thing, you could frankly be THE WO/MAN but, and this might shock you, just because you know who we are that doesn’t mean if you come up to me and Dreadknux with a “Hi Dread/AAUK!” and a cheery smile we’re going to break out the hugs. Its more likely you’ll get a confused smile and a “Hi there…. er… champ/sport/buddy/dude/pal!” Because the likelyhood is we won’t have the Scoobiest of Doos who you flaming well are based on your face alone.

See: Online Fanbase(!)

So here’s two very simple tips:

Introduce yourself! Follow it up with an “It’s (handle) from (location), nice to see/meet you!” or similar.

(Incidentally we don’t bite, if you want a photo or something – amazingly there are those that do – just ask.  We may ask if you can come back later, but if so it’s because we’re busy at that time and it’s not suitable.)

Why NOT have a sticker on the left breast of your t-shirt with your net/forum name? You’ll then be able to spot other people you know and then chat to THEM!

And heck, even if you don’t know people there interact for heaven sake – don’t just sit there drawing a picture. Have a chat with your fellow fan, you might well make some new friends… you’ll at least have a video game passion in common!

But whatever you do have FUN Saturday.  Now if you don’t mind I might be able to sneak 30 mins of sleep before I need to get up for work.

Toodles.

-AAUK-

You might recall various hints being dropped over the last week or so about more Archie Sonic goodness to be revealed. We’re happy to announce that we’ve just had a delivery that will make Archie Sonic fans very happy for sure!

At this year’s Summer of Sonic, you will be able to get your hands on some very cool pieces of art indeed. Those familiar with the comic will no doubt be aware of the talent and dedication that artist Tracey Yardley! has put into the series since joining the team in 2005. Now, courtesy of Yardley! and the Archie team, we have around 80 of his original page drawings up for grabs!  These are the actual pages of the comics before they are scanned and coloured in digitally, so you’ll be owning one of a kind piece of Archie comic book history.

The art includes pages from issue #175, #200, and #208-209, as well as Sonic Universe (including Mobius: 30 Years Later.)

Prices for the page drawings will range between £15 – £20 for most, with first pages at £40. Pages will be on display from the time the venue opens, and you will be able to place reservations on them until 12:00, when transactions will start. This gives everyone a chance to browse through all the page drawings before they’re snapped up!

Only a couple of days to go until SoS ’10, and we’re still bringing you the epic news – how great is that?  Hope you’re all as pumped as we are (‘though hopefully not as exhausted)!

Radio Redux’s annual end of year Sonic singing contest, the Wrecks Factor, will return to SOS for a second time as a live event following its appearance last year during Bentley Jones’ set. 

Three members of the SOS audience will be invited up onto the stage to do vocal battle with a fourth audience member, last years winner Katiefoxe.  There’s the chance to win a special Wrecks Factor trophy and of course to prove yourself as a singer extraordinaire!

It’s not just the prestige of being the World Champion you’ll win if you are victorious Saturday.

Appearances can be deceptive, as you will see, this trophy is HUGE.

About half of you guys coming to Summer of Sonic are visiting for the first time this year, but did you know that SoS – not counting the website in 2006 – is now in its third year?

At the start of 2008, a London convention was just a twinkle in the eye of freelance game journalist Svend Joscelyne and recently employed Sega community manager Kevin Eva. Imagine, if you will, an event financed by people with not a lot of money to their name, and organised and run by a ragtag group of fan site members who, almost without exception, had no experience at doing it!

When Svend put the feelers out in February, there was no shortage of enthusiasm from Sonic fans around the UK dreaming of a return to the social Sonic heyday of the mid-90s. At the same time though, there were plenty of pessimists of the opinion that it’d never take off, and the general feeling was that people really wanted it to happen, but weren’t really sure it would. Even the staff themselves worried about this new Summer of Sonic becoming a flop never seen before in the Sonic community.

Enter Sega UK, stage left. Kevin somehow convinced his bosses at Sega that this little shindig at somewhere called the Dragon Hall would be something good, and they gave him the resources to support SoS in a way we couldn’t have imagined. The Sonic Chronicles pod, masses of prizes for competitions throughout the day, hundreds of goodie bags that took a solid day to fill up at Sega HQ, let alone transport to Covent Garden.

On top of that, we got legends like Richard Jacques, TJ Davis and Nigel Kitching, as well as recent star Bentley Jones to offer their talents for the cause, and got Guinness World Records in to oversee a new world record time for Emerald Hill Zone Act 1.

On the day, we took a 200-person Dragon Hall venue, packed the place (and then some) to the tune of over 300 visitors over the day, and thoroughly rocked the place, for a more successful début Summer of Sonic than I think anyone could have dreamed at the beginning.

In the lead up to this year’s event on Saturday, the Sonic Stadium’s Sister Site the Sonic Show has posted their own look back at the highlights of the original Summer of Sonic. Check it out, and see how far we’ve come in two years…

Thanks so much for your contributions so far to the Spotlight – we will be working through all of our submissions very soon and adding all of the entries onto this website later on today. But as we enter the final week leading up to the Summer of Sonic 2010 convention, it is time we said goodbye to this feature as we all prepare for the big day.

Tuesday will be the last day you will be able to submit anything to the Spotlight – after that, we will try to add your work but it is not guaranteed. Likewise, as previously mentioned, having your work published on this website is not a guarantee of your work appearing in the Summer of Sonic venue on Saturday. Spotlight is a feature intended only for the SoS website.

If you’ve yet to send us anything to show us your love for Sonic, then you have one more day to do it! 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.

By now you’re probably all wondering one thing – that the Summer of Sonic is absolutely fantastic and all, but just when the dickens does it all start? Well wonder no longer. We can confirm that the doors to the Summer of Sonic 2010 will open at 10:30am, on the morning of Saturday 7th August.

Remember, only those with registered tickets will be allowed entry at 10:30am – if you did not manage to pre-register on our website, you will need to wait until 11:30am to be allowed in on a capacity-basis.

From the moment you walk in there will be art tables, merchandise booths, playable game pods and cabinet displays to admire and enjoy. At 11:00am, Svend ‘Dreadknux’ Joscelyne and Kevin ‘AAUK’ Eva will take to the stage to formally welcome you all to the day’s activities and events. From thereon in, it’s showtime!

We have an excellent schedule planned for your entertainment as you chill out and meet new friends – we will be publishing this a little later on so you can plan your day accordingly. Obviously, the event you will want to look out for is Crush 40′s first ever live Western performance – this will be the last event to take place in the day at 5:45pm, and will follow Svend and Rory ‘Roareye Black’ Joscelyne’s contest prize giveaways and closing show.

Unfortunately, like all good things, the Summer of Sonic 2010 must come to an end. And that end will be 7:00pm. That’s right, because of the amount of Way Past Cool we’ve crammed into this year’s convention, SoS will be going on for longer than past years. We hope you’ll enjoy it.

Reminder: Although the Summer of Sonic 2010 will officially finish at 7:00pm, the front doors will close at 5:30pm, ahead of Crush 40′s live performance. After this time, door staff will only be able to let people out – nobody will be allowed to come back in after they have left the venue at this point. If you plan to enjoy Crush 40 and need to leave the venue before the performance, please allow yourself enough time to arrive back at the venue before doors close.

To recap, then:

10:30am – Doors open
11:00am – Start
5:30pm – Doors close
7:00pm – Finish

We all hope that you’ll all have an awesome time at Summer of Sonic, and that everything will go smoothly, without a hitch and basically that SoS10 will be perfect.

But just in case we’re here to help.

Those of you that have received your tickets will notice you’ve got a nice shiny blue ticket with Sonic on. Well there are two other types of tickets, of which the one you may want to look out for is the red one, featuring our favourite Echidna.

Why do you want to look out for those? Well these tickets are reserved for people running the event, such as myself and the other guys who write these blogs.  If you need some help talk to any of the guys that have these tickets hanging around their necks and they will do their best to help you.

However there are two areas that there will always be staff, the DJ box at the front of the venue will always have a DJ there, most useful if you’ve lost your parents or other members of your party and need to signal them to come down to you. The other place being the entrance where you will always find me and some form of security.

In the end we hope all members will be sensible and kind to each other but any problems, search one of us guys with red tickets out.

Remember guys we won’t allow anyone who alters their ticket in, so don’t even try to create a red knuckles ticket, because I know everyone that is meant to have one, and if you aren’t one of them you aren’t getting in.

With only a week to go hopefully you have your ticket printed and ready to go!
Joshua Urtheart Cartlidge

As well as receiving your bag of goodies at the door, there will also be a while load range of merchandise available for purchase at the Summer of Sonic; enough to appease the appetite of even the most avid merch-hog out there!

Feast your eyes on one of the very first Official Crush 40 T-Shirts, that will be for sale during the event (including this EXCLUSIVE Summer of Sonic design!) As well as a selection of T-Shirts available, there will also be other Crush 40 goods available including badges and guitar picks. All items will be available for purchase at the Crush 40 store during the event!

Not only that, there will be a whole host of other Sonic the hedgehog related merchandise including plush toys and comics up for grabs – stocks will be strictly limited though, so if you want to snag yourself some bits and pieces, better do it early on the day!

Youd better bring your pennies with you!

EDIT: There will also be a selection of CDs available at the shop on the day too!

Oooh, shiny!  For more details on the 2010 Cosplay competition click here.

NB: AAUK not included in prize.