Sonic the Hedgehog Theme Magazine Scans & Covers 6

Sonic Magazine Scans Page 6

These magazines can be from anywhere in the world.
Since Sonic's games are so popular, magazines everywhere love to add him to the cover and do stories when the games come out. Collecing magazines with Sonic on the cover is great to do, as it chronicals the release of the different games, and will show in the future what was going on at that time. Plus, it's always nice to stockpile cool Sonic art! With this page you can see modern and not-so-modern magazine scans from everywhere. Toy ads, toy reviews & unusual content but not game articles. (there are too many articles/reviews/etc that are normal, to be able to make a page for)

Sonic Magazine Scans Page 1 * Sonic Magazines Page 2 * Sonic Magazines 3 * Sonic Magazines 4 * Sonic Magazines 5 * Sonic Magazines 6 * Sonic Magazines 7 * Magazine Gallery SonicGear Main Page

Here is an issue of "Todo Sega" magazine. It's probably a Spanish magazine, the title is literally "all Sega". But is it from Spain or Mexico, or somewhere else entirely? The "MD" in this case, is it for "mega drive"? The headlines include giving away 10 32x's, something about Ristar, & quite clearly Chaotix for the 32X. Impressivly, it's Metal Sonic who is the solo star on this cover. The art is decent too, & it's pretty unusual for JUST 1 villain of just 1 property to appear on the cover of....pretty much anything. So this is a cool issue of a magazine to own, no-matter where it is from.

This is the cover for Sega Maga magazine, a Japanese publication. Just by looking at the cover graphic here, you wouldn't be able to tell this is their Sonic Adventure 1 issue...but it is! They're using an older (but still 3D rendered) Sonic & Tails without the SA1 look. Why? Maybe it's a very early preview, and they didn't have the art yet, or they had only the 'new look' flat arts & wanted to go with something obviously CG & 3D to promote the look of the game. But, if you look there in the black text (in the yellow circle) it is indeed SA1 related. It is interesting to see the non-matching art styles used for the cover.

Sonic Adventure 2 proto wierd art example

This image is here to help explain the cover above. Japan wasn't the only region to use some kind of non-matching-SA1 style or speculative type art in a magazine. This CG art of Sonic was likely done 'in house' at whatever magazine this was because it's got the concept of the look, but it's still pretty wrong. Long straight spikes, tiny simple shoes, big wierd socks, borderless ears & sort of wiggly versions of his green eyes & mouth. At least the Sega Maga used official CG to try and promote the concept of the first really non side scrolling nor isometric Sonic game that wasn't a racer.

Here are 2 issues of Sega Visions, both from 1992. In that year, Sonic 2 coming out was the biggest deal, so naturally they wanted a lot of coverage. The left cover appears elsewhere on 'magazines' but the right is new. It has stories for Ecco the Dolphin, the "Sega Menacer" (that big light gun) , Sega CD stuff & basically tells you about how cool Sonic 2 is going to be with "All new adventures" These issues are from Aug-Sept & Nov-Dec of 1992

Here are 2 magazines spotlighting Sonic Adventure 1 on the cover. The right side is the first issue of the USA's Offical Sega Dreamcast Magazine with its "Exclusive Full Review" (seen smaller on a different magazines page) The left is Diehard Gamefan Magazine, with an all-art cover that appears to have been drawn by Patrick "Spaz" Spaziante who usually did the cover art for the Archie Sonic Comic. (Was the cover signed by him anywhere?) These magazines are from June & Sept. of 1999.

Here is Volume 1 of "Mega World" magazine. This is a small magazine / booklet thing supposedly produced or helped by Sega in Japan. You can't read any of the text in that black area there, it's all in Japanese. The art is kind of confusing with Sonic holding a helmet he could never wear, standing in or possibly behind (but then it's really small?) a red convertible type car. What exactly is this "Mega World" about?

Space left for mega world information maybe

Here is a Gamestation magazine from Europe. Sonic is headlining on the cover with "Super Sonic! Sega Serves Up This Season's Aces". Sonic is shown from the "Sega Superstars Tennis" where he played Tennis with a variety of other characters. The "Featuring" area lists other games they're covering of previewing in this issue. Photo & owned by Rhia

What is "License"? Some kind of magazine or trade publication about copyrighted items? Whatever it is, this page or cover wishes Sonic a happy 15th anniversary. Someone has framed it & hung it on the wall. Write in if you know what this is...

Here is a game magazine called "Retro" about older games. On the artsy cover, you can see Sonic, Wario, Pikachu, Crash, Earthworm Jim & something at the top. The subhead is "The Jump Off!" What month/year did this magazine release in?

Here is Mega Zone Magazine from Australia. It's a multi-system coverage bi-monthly (see systems at the top there) On their 24th issue, done in October of 1992, the cover featured Sonic 2 under the headline "The greatest video game ever returns!"
It uses that creepy-ish 'Egg-botnik' 4 fingered version of him grabbing the "2" in the background.

For issue 52 of EGM, Sonic CD was the whole-cover image. They chose Sonic Vs. Metal Sonic over the UFO from the special stage. People accuse CD of being a little obscure (the system sort of was) but it did make waves when it came out, as seen here.

This is a special wrap-around cover for the Japanese magazine "Nintendo Dream". The art goes everywhere on bot the front and back covers, to complete a scene with most (all?) characters from the game. It is suspected that the art is original (hired artist copies the style of the game art (heavy black edge lines, somewhat geomatric) to make an all new piece for the cover) The result looks nice and eye catching.

Usually ads don't make it to "Magazine Scans", just covers, but this one is rather unusual. It's an ad in Game Informer magazine, but it's for their own Web TV show "Replay" which is found at gameinformer.com/replay , if it is still running or has an episode archive. Interestingly, they choose to show Shadow there, instead of Sonic who is usually chosen. Also, look at Luigi, they'd usually pick Mario.
The show appears to be some sort of retrospective, looking at nostalgic games or notoriously bad ones. Hopefully they're not dumping Shadow there to emphasize how much "everyone hated his game". However, their character choices and ad copy do make people curious about the show, which is the point, so it is a good ad. Photo by Crystal Sonic Fan.

Here's a better look at the Games Master magazine special edition (from Magazines 4) cover. This special magazine was 7.99 pound (expensive!) but came with many bonus items and seemed to be dedicated all to Sonic. The headline here is "We celebrate gaming's coolest character". This is a collectible item, if you see it, do preserve it.

This is an issue of NGC magazine the "Best selling UK independent Nintendo Mag", likely to be issue 65. It's excited for gamecube & Sonic Adventure 2, with a giant Sonic all over the cover & headlining their coverage.

This magazine ran about up to the wii era before it ended & it did appriciate/feature Sonic quite a few times. Discovered by Speendlex

Domashniy Ukraine Magazine Sonic Coverage

This is Sonic game coverage from a magazine in the Ukraine called Domashniy. It covered not only games, but computer stuff, consoles and more, but they always found time to talk about Sonic. Here, you can see their Generations coverage (left) and All Stars Racers (right). Look at the text, the letters are Cyrillic, however randomly the game titles are written in English. This magazine ended in 2011, making its Generations coverage some of its last. Interestingly, it released a CD with its final issue that contained PDFs of all of its prior content as an archive. Very courteous & with an eye for preservation! Magazines owned & photo by Speendlex

This is Hobby Consolas magazine from Spain. As you can see, they kept good coverage of Sonic over the years, but did they like the Simpsons more? The first magazine cover has the Japan Sonic 1 art at the top, the next the USA Sonic 2 art, and the last is Sonic 3D blast for a piece about mascot characters going into 3D. (Notice they made the magazine logo 3D too) Magazines discovered by Speendlex

Expert Software Product Catalog Magazine

Is this a magazine?
Sort of. It's the "Expert Software" product catalog. It may be a 'trade' which is an industry only publication (for stores, not for the public) It came out around the time of Sonic CD, as you can see there with the Sonic graphic. This is another of those items that advertises itself with everyone else's most popular offerings. (This is ok to do in this case, because they sell the items inside) So, you can see Sonic, Ronald McDonald & a popular TV of the time, among others. It's another interesting look that many companies had a lot of confidence in Sonic at the time, featuring him & his games to gain popularity. Photo discovered by Crystal SonicFan