TSS @ SAGE: Day 6 - Chaos Control, Sonic Slash and The Rest!

Yes, after a hiatus from reporting on the event, TSS is back bringing you the best of the Sonic Amateur Games Expo! Only The Sonic Stadium can get you impartial comments and reports right from the booths themselves, and every day this week we'll be giving you reports on many games at once! We've also got a bunch of interviews lined up too, so make sure you tune in every day for the latest! Are you ready for this?

SAGE 7 Day 6 Coverage

Games Covered Today:

• Peach's Journey - Moogle Rush;
• Chaos Control - Mj2/Manga-Gaga;
• Sonic Slash - Chao Killer Team;
• [ Everything Else ]

Game of the Day:

Chaos Control

Games Coverage

SAGE Coverage provided by Dreadknux
Click on the images to enlarge them...

Peach's Journey - Moogle Rush

Dread: At Kulock's booth, Sonic 3D (shown last year) was not ready for a demo. Ku mentioned that S3D was nearly finished, but that the timescale of the game's actual completion would be awkward - in-between SAGEs would not get the game much attention apparently (although I'd still be interested).

However, Peach's Journey came in an Engine Test demo, and it worked really nicely. It plays similar to a Mario game, but with a few changes: blocks bounce Peach back, while bouncing off of music blocks (or Sonic) gets you to higher places. Aside from a small "Peach Moonwalking" bug (in which Peach walks backwards while moving in a direction) every now and then, the engine is pretty tight.

I'm looking forward to Sonic 3D, but with Peach's Journey Kulock looks to be onto a winner there.

• Visit Moogle Rush SAGE Booth

Chaos Control - Mj2 / Manga-Gaga

Dread: Chaos Control came with a movie which looked very interesting indeed, and the booth also included a demo from ZFGE. Playing this demo to represent the talent from this booth at SAGE 7, everything seems perfect for a stealth game, and has all the atmosphere and elements that make it feel like a Sonic game too. The enemies were slightly dumb and easy to kill, but you probably should expect that on the first stage - trying to escape a sniper on your case later on in the demo was very exciting to say the least.

We're keeping on big fat eye on Mj2's work here - not due till Q4 2004 apparently, so a lot of opportunity to make this promising demo into a game of the year.

• Visit Chaos Control SAGE Booth

Sonic Slash - Chao Killer Team

Dread: This game is OK. First play impressions were concerning the level design - it's multi-tiered, but a little empty and bland. A tight level design where you can cover all areas of the stage helps make a great game - there was a great hoofing space in Act 2 of the first zone which was unnecessary to investigate, as the Goal Ring was in the opposite direction, for instance.

The engine is good enough, but don't put so many pits in the first zone maybe - it's just not 'Sonic'. :P I've seen worse games on show, this game doesn't rate as bad, but it rather rates around the middle.

• Visit Sonic Slash SAGE Booth

All Other Appearances @ SAGE 7...

Well, so many SAGE Demos and Booths to show off, yet only a select few had demos available to play. We've covered games that were in a playable form mostly, but what about those many titles that detailed their games?

• Jarel Jones takes a break from music to make a dynamic text battle system for mIRC, called WaveStorm. Peeps head to the WaveStorm IRC chat room, download and read the rules, and then battle for supremacy. Seems strange, but hey, we had The Sonic Battle Stadium the other year on the SSMB, so a mIRC battling system sounds very funky indeed.

• S&A; Productions show off their latest Zelda title, The Legendary Swords. What this is, rather than just one Zelda game, is two Zelda games in one - kind of like Oracle of Ages and Seasons on Game Boy Color. 'The Sacred Sword' and 'The Elemental Sword' were assumedly two different games before being merged into one. The overall project looks interesting.

• Maximum Speed's SAGE 7 booth is so hell bent on clogging your internet connection, that the Flash file is a whopping 16MB! You'd be better off downloading the file and viewing it offline to see what she has to offer. If you can't be bothered, well hey that's what we're here for! ^_^ Maximum Speed's premier offering, Sonic X: Chronological Saga is boasting original music, a decent engine and over 20 levels, which is a feat that has rarely, if ever, been pulled off in fan gaming. Judging by the screens, the game looks a bit basic, but we'll have to see the demo to find out what it's really like.

• Kragersoft have a game on offer called Chao Extreme, but the booth link does not work =_= No other real information is known of this title.

• Blues the Squirrel also has a non-working booth with the SAGE showing Johnny Turbo (Geez, anyone remember him?! :P). It seems the Mr. T wannabe has some fans after all. All we know is that the game will be a Contra-style shooter.

• Steve Edwards has a game called BMX for Life. Hm. I could go on forever about how controversial my thoughts on BMX'ing or 'L337 SK8ing' is, but the screens show this game at an early stage, and could well be the first widely-publicised BMX fangame online. See what SAGE does for publicity? :P

• Magnablade Software has Sonic Kaiser, of which a demo was promised, but... meh, obviously. Not an outstanding load of information regarding the game on the booth, but it shall be "A sonic fan-game like no other, with cool moves and animated cutscenes". Sounds intruiging.

• XStudios' booth consists of Sonic Heroes Chao, which is a fill-in gap until the real Sonic Heroes comes along (this wasn't our little stab at the game, the developer really did say that), playing as Chao instead of the actual characters however. Emphasis is on missions, so gawd knows how many actual levels there will be. The time gap is closing for Heroes though, so the game should be near completion. Link to Demo was broken.

• Shadow Team didn't just have Sonic the Fighters 2 to show off - many many titles were shown off and announced too at this year's SAGE event, including a cute little game called LIL' ROBO, a Mario title called Mario's Mini Micro Adventures, and Dreadknux (eg. Moi) announced his (or, my) own Sonic title, called Sonic Adventure: Renegade, in which the emphasis is a lot more focused on the activities of GUN Military Corp. Shadow Team USA also held some titles on display, including Shadow Adventure, which is an enjoyable platformer starring Sonic's favourite rival, and an original title called Shadow Storm, which looks very cool indeed.

• Vortex Team had a title called Gundam Nova, which is a fan game from the anime series Wing Gundam (or Gundam Wing, whatever, who really cares *shot and massacred by Gundam fans* :P). Booth link didn't work, no details present during the whole SAGE event.

• The Neo Warper (aka Zak Lloyd) has on show for us a title called Sonic Neon Adventure. Although the booth contains impressive Sonic and Knuckles 3D models, the demo was not so impressive - locked via a password and username system, so obviously no-one could get to the goods. Apparently the 3D models are for cutscenes, and the game itself boasts a completely original style of play.

• SagaSoft are working on Clash Vs., a title that takes the style of Smash Bros. Melee only in 2D. The inspiration was from a poor Smash Bros. style Sonic game, called 'Melee Online' (yes, it was bad). Most of the booth is unavailable, which is a shame, because the title card for SAGE makes it look promising. Let's hope that there are more than basic moves, a little bit more than a crummy duck animation for most of the attacks and that the levels don't let you get stuck in them. :P

• Nicho's Minions make another appearance at SAGE 7, with two games detailed. 2Metal looks the most complete, and features Mecha Sonic (from Sonic & Knuckles), who has been reprogrammed to defeat the new Metal Sonic created by Eggman. In Nack the Weasel, the sniper gets a game all of his own, mixing many elements such as shooter, puzzler and platformer. Looking good thus far.

• ParadoxX includes Sonic Action at SAGE, but there was no link to the booth.

• Aaaaand FINALLY, Tets showcases a ROM hack project, titled Project EBHack. It's not meant to be a huge explosion of the ROM of Earthbound apparently, yet more of an interesting expansion including changes to graphics and text. Booth link was dead.

And That's It!

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