#i GET some ppl dont know about sonic battle

[sophfandoms53]

“They’re retconning Shadow’s backstory, why is Emerl there??? He’s not supposed to be there?? That’s wrong???”

So what I’m gathering from that is some of y’all just don’t actually know shit about Sonic Battle and Shadow’s story in that game huh,,,

[superemeralds]

Sonic 25th anniversary art book review

Hey guys, it’s Shadow. I bought this book. And I’m really emotional about it.

This review will feature a lot of pictures to prove my points.

TLDR; Don’t buy the book. Just ask me if you want a picture of anything. I believe other ppl already made scans of the good pages but If you want me to I can make scans of the few pages that atually do have concept art.

edit: you can buy the book ofc i just think its not worth it, mostly when you are poor as fuck like me and u go in for an investment. (though it would help maybe getting another, better one? I’m kinda conflicted here)

Onto the review:

Fist of all: this book is bigger than you think.

This is an intuos pen&touch small as size ref

The book weighs a ton and the quality of color and pager is amazing! 10/10 for quality. The binding seems lovely too.

Opening up you immediately feel the sonic atmosphere and you are greeted with text that i was unable to read because it had long ass fucking text in unnecessary passages.

I guess it could be of interest for some hardcore fans, or people who know nothing about the series at all, but as a fan it is very disheartening to see a fuckton of text about one single game, and then have other games completely dismissed from existence.

Sonic and the secret rings was totally left out and not mentioned once in the book, design changes like they happened in riders were not explained.

But. I need to get back in track and start with some formal stuff here.

The book has 245 Pages.

About 160 of those pages are dedicaded to the classic games ( 7 first years of sonic the hedgehog)

(pictured is the distribution between classic area 1991-1998 on the left; and the entire rest of sonic to the right)

And, don’t get me wrong, I would not be mad about this if there was actual good content like tons of sketches and level concepts! But there’s none of that.

instead we get this:

Huge prints of ingame sprites. A fuckton of them.

It’s nice to see how they designed the enemies but why Did they print out pixelated sprites so huge and with so much care for clean back grounds and then have messes like this

These two pages are the only ones in which these characters were ever mentioned at all.

Blaze’s debut game, Sonic Rush, was not mentioned once except for the little “info” on her page saying that she did actually debut in this game and it did, infact, exist.

We get worse pages, though.

These two are the only pages to 06 that we do get to see, and silver didn’t even get a double spread page. They just slapped the sketches on there, tiny, crowded.

Disrespectful.

How did they introduce other characters? Let’s have a look at a classic character!

wow that is neat!

t-theres more?

that feels kind of unnecessarily big but okay.

(he got one more double page of art with him and sonic together and he is seen in multiple other art pieces for other games throguhout the book. He’s also on one of those cool pages that you can extend out for a parnorama of chemical plant)

I thought! Hey every character will get such a cool introduction!

Thought.

The last character to get one of these is Shadow.

I thought: hey cool concept art! I can’t wait for everyone to have concept pages vs Final pages! Mostly cant wait for the silver one haha (we all know how that ended)

b-black on black? Shadow SA style art from 1998 ????

Boom shadow from 2016??? But boom came out 2014 ??? (they got that right w all other charcaters)

What comes right after that boom shadow, though? Big the cat.

and after big comes this disgrace.

This is the first time we see our God of Destruction: Chaos. And, besides a sonic battle spread, it is the only time. We don’t get to see perfect chaos. We don’t get to see SADX concept sketches. all we get is this:

It’s the same hue of orange. Why is it the runners model? We don’t know. Theres no concept of the echidna tribe, nothing to the lore...

Infact, the only modern game they offer concept art of is SA2.

Like w the classics they gave us stuff like this

below is all just for sonic 1 (or just sonic in 1991 in general as the book tends to organize things)

( i decided to leave out the 30 more pages of sprites and promotional art and unrelated jumbo that was more abt sonics image as new mascot for SEGA)

The below art is for sonic 2

kinda sparse, and not as much, but still colored concept art for the levels and stuff, right! I mean there are also tails sprites and promotional art and box art and variants and all that!!

lets move on to the more modern games!

Oh cool the SA games!!!

screenshots next to concept art! Me likey!

Wow that’s so cool! I’ve already seen two of those in generations but that’s fine! Cool having them physical now!

Oh my god! So much concept art! This is so cool! Even when non of it is colored I cherish it its so good!

I can’t wait to see this for all the games!!! Story book ones!!! yes!!! I’d like to see early concepts of riders!!!

(I totally forgot how little pages were left at this point)

I can’t wait to see unleashed concept art!!! The one I saw in my game is sooo good cant wait to have this shit printed!!!

Dragon road? nice! Oh hello there promo art!

woha a double spread page! This image is really unspectacular but I guess it’s nice!!! Can’t wait to see-

oh. Oh. that’s already all there is to unleashed.

Concept art? Who is that? Never heard of her.

Box art and characters is all we know. Screenshots maybe

anyone ask for a giant ass print of a screenshot of greenhill classic? no? too bad.

Don’t get me started on the 7 pges of Sonic Boom they have squeezed in there

While I hate boom, we can’t dismiss this horrible layout choice. Tiny pictures? Really?

What’s on the next page then that you don’t have the space for making them ncie and big?

Did they literally use a filler on that right page? You could’ve used that for concept art.

?????  YOU COULD’VE USED THIS INK TO PRINT A PRETTY SONIC UNLEASHED CONCEPT COLLAGE W TINY ASS PICTURES LIKE YOU DID W SONIC BOOM ON THAT TEXT PAGE.

Maybe I’m the biased one who thinks of Modern games to be of importance and for them to be more aesthetic and pretty and all that (i mean its mainly bc my fucked up brain cant process the classic games, too much color, too much going on, too sharp on the eyes)

but is it too much to want an even spread between classic and modern? To want justive for all the amazing characters?

If you didn’t get the book yet, then please dont. It’s not worth your money.

There are 5k prints of this book, and I sure as hell hope that there will be 5k disappointed fans.