25 Years of Sonic - Video (#206)

Continuing on with the Sonic 25th Anniversary posts I suppose; a couple days ago Sega released a short 1 and a half minute video chronicling a little journey through all of Sonic's major video game appearances since his debut in 1991. It's a cool little video and it shows that Sega has no problem with poking fun at itself, especially when the video gets to Sonic 06 and simply shows a 'now loading' screen. Oddly enough though, some games that I count as major instalments in the series weren't in the video, such as Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic and the Secret Rings and Sonic and the Black Knight weren't in the video, although to be fair they weren't considered as very good games by a majority of people. I think the weirdest part is that Sonic Lost World didn't appear, mainly since the music playing in the video is actually the main theme of that game, but whatever, it's an awesome little video nonetheless. The end also teases a game celebrating Sonic's 25th... I'm hoping that'll be announced next month :D

Check out the video here.

All of the main games in the Sonic franchise.

Thomas

Sonic 25th Anniversary Announcement? (#205)

A while ago, at the Sonic 25th Anniversary Panel at SXSW, Sega didn't announce any new Sonic games, but instead informed the public that they are planning to release news regarding an important Sonic event during San Diego Comic Con, next month on July 22nd. Sega has also promised that Crush 40 will be performing there, who are the band behind pretty much all of the rock songs in Sonic games, which to be honest, I love. There will also apparently be some kind of 'special guests' there, as well as exclusive merchandise. Many fans are speculating that Sega could finally announce Sonic Adventure 3, which many Sonic fans have been longing for well over a decade now, or even some kind of HD remake of a classic Sonic game. If that happened, I would personally love Sonic 3 & Knuckles to be remade in the style of modern 3D Sonic games like Generations, Colours and Unleashed. But who knows? We'll see what Sega announces. Hopefully it will be satisfying.

Thomas

E3 2016: New Zelda Trailer! (#204)

In case you didn't know, June is one of the best times of the year for gamers. The Electronic Entertainment Expo, also known as E3, has just started in the past week or so, and Nintendo's presentation has been running very recently. Although I haven't been catching up with Nintendo's announcements and stuff lately since I feel that they haven't been offering stuff that interests me so far this year, I was really excited today to hear that the upcoming main 3D Zelda game which will likely release next year for both Wii U and NX has finally been given a name, and a brand new trailer showing off some more gameplay. The game looks beautiful. The game's official name will be The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and you can watch the E3 trailer right here. God it looks so good.

Link is fired.

Thomas

What Does The Scouter Say? (#203)

I'm almost certain I made a joke about this in a post in the past, and I was probably joking about the possibility, but... this blog hit over 9000 pageviews. 

No, but I'm not even joking. Look at the picture below.

*Insert overused internet meme here*

Like I said, I think I made a promise to share with you guys when I got that many views, and well, here we are. Geeeeeeeez! Nearly 10000 pageviews! This is actually crazy! Are half of these just me or something?

Thomas

Planet Hulk in Thor 3? (#202)

If you didn't already know, it has been known to the public for a while now that the Hulk will be making an appearance in Thor: Ragnarok, which releases next year. More recently, there have been several rumours that Hulk's role in the film will be based on the Planet Hulk storyline, which was a plot in the Hulk's comic books a few years ago that ran for about a few months, maybe even up to a year. I own the story in hardback but I don't think I've ever read the whole thing, though I would definitely like to in the future. Anyway, since Thor 3 will reportedly take place primarily off Earth, it would make sense for the Hulk to show up somewhere in space after he flew off into that direction at the end of Avengers: Age of Ultron. Although apparently in that film Nick Fury tells Black Widow that the helijet landed near Hela, so who knows? I think a solo Planet Hulk film would have been more awesome though.

Thor: Ragnarok releases November 3rd 2017 and as usual here in the UK we get it a week earlier, October 27th. Nice.

Thomas

Captain America: HYDRA Agent?! (#201)

I'm quite late in talking about this since the news has been well known for over a week now, but a massive (and somewhat unpopular) plot twist has been revealed in recent Marvel comics. Last Wednesday, on May 25th, issue 1 of a new comic book series called Captain America: Steve Rogers was released. If you haven't read it, plan to read it and somehow have managed to avoid the incredibly large amount of posts regarding the reveal at the end of the issue, don't read beyond this point because spoilers.

At the end of the issue, Captain America gets into a plane where Erik Selvig had been kidnapped and tied up, I believe, by Baron Zemo. Cap does something that he has never said before; he utters words that nobody ever expected him to say. 'Hail Hydra.' That's right, Captain America himself, the symbol of the USA, freedom and everything that the United States stands for, is saluting a group that he has fought against for decades and decades. And that's the main thing that everybody has been talking about recently.

I actually went to buy some comic books on Saturday 28th May, and I decided to buy the issue because I really wanted to read it myself. I was lucky; I got the last copy in stock! There was the Hydra part of course which was the main reason I got the issue but apart from that I actually just really loved the story itself and I'm going to buy future issues for sure. I don't think issue 2 is out until June 29th though.

I have a few ideas on what will become of this massive twist. First of all, as a big Marvel fan, and I think most of you agree with me, I am almost certain that there is no chance of Cap actually being a HYDRA agent. I believe that this is, of course, mainly something to confuse people or get people to keep buying future issues to find out the truth (not that there's anything wrong with that, I'm really excited about this series now and I can't wait to find out what's going on). But I think that either Steve is being brainwashed, or that this Steve is somehow a fake. Maybe an android or even a clone. However, I think that my most realistic and probable idea is this: maybe HYDRA has changed and now represents a good cause that Captain America can agree with. In fact, I'm almost certain that somebody in the issue mentions something about there being a new HYDRA lately. After all, S.H.I.E.L.D. could be seen as unreliable after recent times when they have been betrayed from within, like in Captain America: The Winter Soldier (even though that's part of the movies and not the comics). This new HYDRA's non-evil motives could be kept secret to protect their operations, and Cap could be one of only a few who know this. My final theory is that Cap could just be pretending to be a HYDRA agent to somebody who we haven't seen yet. Who knows, maybe somebody who believes that he is HYDRA is communicating with him on the plane he's inside and the truth could be revealed next issue.

Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the beloved American hero we've known for 75 years has actually always been fighting on the side of those whom he pretends to stand against. Either way, I'm sure the truth will be told in future issues, which I most definitely plan to pick up. What do you think of this HYDRA development? Real or fake?

Thomas

One Year Anniversary (#200)

WOAH! Yes, this is actually happening! Welcome to my two-hundredth post on my blog, Awesome Fantasy News. Two hundred! Do you know how many hundreds that is?! Two! And, to top it all off, today is June 2nd 2016. Is there anything significant of this date to you? Nothing that stands out about the fact that today is the second day in the sixth month of the two thousand and sixteenth year since the year 0 A.D.? Well, I'm disappointed. You should know how important this particular date is. Let's have a quick little gander at the picture below...

You can read more on my blog. *hinthintnudgenudge*

That's correct, it's the first post I ever published on this blog, back when I was a wee lil' scrub when it came to mastering the art that is blog writing (I still am though let's be completely honest lol). And, if we look closely at the date that I uploaded it...

CONSPIRACY INTENSIFIES

Yep! As well as having today be my 200th post, it's also been exactly one year since I uploaded the first post on this blog! Boy, let me tell you that it took a lot of planning ahead to get that to coincide... in fact, it's the main reason why I've been posting so much for the last month or two, even when it wasn't necessary. See, in order for this post to be made on the exact date of the one year anniversary, I had to make a lot more posts than I usually would. I know it's not like I had to and it would have been fine if it didn't, but I'm really glad that it did because it's kinda... perfect.

Anyway, geeeeeeez, the big two-double-oh! I've said these exact kind of things in my one hundreth post back in September, but I can't believe that this random little idea became some sort of success and actually worked out. I mean, all the other time I've tried blogs, the highest number of posts I made was about eight or ten, so you may be able to see that I've tried really really hard to get this to work and to put motivation into this even when I've really not felt like it. Just look at what happened a couple months ago; I basically ended the blog after post #150 and was unsure if I was ever going to come back to it but a random burst of inspiration came to me and, voila, here we are. I will say that this is going to be a lot shorter than post #100 because that was ridiculously long. Not in a bad way though, it's one of those posts I look at when I want to be reminded why I started this in the first place and why I should continue and start typing up the next post.

So thank you to everybody that reads this blog. In September I practically ended it but I'm very glad that I brought it back again in March. Also, just a heads up, posts will be going up less often now because I've been posting very frequently so that this would would be both my 200th post and my 1 year anniversary. I'll still be updating often, but maybe just once a week, because I have to record a lot of YouTube videos (speaking of which, I started uploading on there again) and also I still have a lot of stuff that I need to study for.

Thanks to everybody reading this right now, I couldn't have found the effort to get this far without you.

Thomas