#Is sonic mania a fan game software#

Guest contributions and interviews from those previously as well as currently involved with the Sonic franchise started to become a recurring feature of the event.

Crucially though, SEGA opened their arms, embracing SAGE and the fans involved with it. For most other fan game developers, this would be the point at which the story would end with a cease and desist letter. SEGA and SAGE’s relationship In the years after SFGHQ took over hosting the event, SEGA started taking an interest in the community. The content on the website is even blanked between events to create a sense of truly being a live experience. The SFGHQ website itself is now dedicated to the annual SAGE event. Once originally taking place twice a year, albeit with some gaps, SAGE now takes place once a year, typically during summer. In 2006, SFGHQ took over hosting the event, and has continued to be the home of SAGE ever since. Meanwhile, they and many others in the community would join the festivities going on in the chatroom to discuss the games on show. Fan game creators would submit images, videos and even demos of their games to feature on the website. Rather than a real world convention like its inspiration, E3, the event centred around showcasing content on the SAGE website and an IRC chatroom. Originally founded by community member Ryan Bloom AKA ‘BlazeHedgehog’, SAGE was intended as a showcase for fan games in order to ‘soften’ the view of publishers towards fan games and portray them as something more than simple trademark infringement. The Sonic Amateur Games Expo, or SAGE, had been running since 2000. From 2006, though, it became best known for something greater: SAGE. In this case, though, it was dedicated to the collection of Sonic Fan Games and distributing the assets and knowledge for others to make them – specifically using the easily available The Games Factory. SFGHQ’s Boom: Rise of SAGE The website, most commonly known as SFGHQ, started off as a typically basic early-Internet fan site.

One of these websites, Sonic Fan Games HQ, can be credited with a lot of the success of this community through its influence throughout the years. Many websites became dedicated resources of assets, tips and even pre-built game ‘engines’ using this event-based scripting that were designed to as closely replicate the physics of the Mega Drive Sonic games as possible within the limits of the software. No coding was involved, but creative minds were capable of using the event-based scripting to surprising effect.

#Is sonic mania a fan game software#

In the earliest days of this community, the tools available were crude (and often pirated) drag and drop game making software such as ClickTeam’s Klik ‘n’ Play and The Game Factory. In Sonic Mania’s case, the game simply wouldn’t exist without the strong community that built up around making Sonic fan games. Something that’s apparent in the success of the official Sonic Twitter account run by Aaron Webber, a long-time Sonic fan who worked his way into leading the Sonic PR team from humble roots as a moderator for a Phantasy Star Online forum. But, no-one in the industry has embraced this community more than SEGA, and that direct and friendly relationship with their fans would seem to have led to an overall renaissance of the Sonic brand itself. It’s a common part of many online communities, especially those centred around video games. What’s most unusual about Sonic Mania’s development, though, is that so many of the people working on the game have spent years making Sonic fan-games, fan-art and music remixes. Sonic’s Band While Sonic Mania’s development is being overseen by Sonic Team, the day-to-day development has all been completed by a small group of indie developers. This is the story of how a group of young, creative, fans came to live the dream of making a new Sonic game. Unlike most of this year’s biggest games, though, the humble roots of Sonic Mania make for a surprising success story for a community of Sonic fans. The 15th August sees one of the most anticipated gaming releases of the year in Sonic Mania.