Sonic Team
From Sega Retro
To do
23:59, 23 December 2021 (EST)
Debunking "Sonic Team in Russia/Novosibirsk"
- So a while back, a one-time editor with a Russian name edited https://sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Sonic_Team to add that Sonic Team had a location in Novosibirsk, Russia. That edit remained for a while. Later, we had someone edit this article to add the same information. While that edit got reversed, I decided to quickly do some research into it. The lack of pretty much any information/announcements/news articles related to "Sonic Team" and "Novosibirsk" told me that this was false. However, I did find... something.
- There's an office complex in Novosibirsk which contains an "IT company" named "Sonic Team" on Russian map websites (i.e. regional equivalent to Google Maps.) Obviously this doesn't mean anything, but the listing contains photos of an office interior.
- Doing further research, I found Russian Sonic-themed social media account which posted a different set of photos of the same office. One of these photos features a group of young adult men who look like programmers/developers/etc - one of whom is wearing a Sonic the Hedgehog shirt.
- Finally, I found a homebrew Mega Drive developer headquartered in the same city. I believe this developer/team (or a second developer/team) has since been properly listed here.
- That's it. So I'm going to say "No, Sonic Team has no ties to anything in Novosibirsk." However, if anyone wants to look into it (if only to further disprove it), here are the two respective links: here and here. This is probably just: an IT company named Sonic Team (coincidentally or not), a homebrew Mega Drive developer who somehow got labelled as Sonic Team, simply a meme, or some amalgamation of all three. Anyway.
CartridgeCulture (talk) 00:42, 16 January 2022 (EST)
split
Shouldn't this be split up based on era like the others? And according to GDRI the current internal name is "Global Entertainment Software Dept. #1"? Also "The Sonic Team"? - Andlabs 00:02, 7 April 2012 (CDT)
Actually on top of that, where does the AM8 part come from? What was the Oshima/Naka/Kodama/etc. team that did Phantasy Star II if "AM8" was started in 1990? What about Sonic Team USA? I think I'm going to rewrite some of this tomorrow, but first I'll need to know about those questions - Andlabs 00:24, 7 April 2012 (CDT)
rewrite
There's a lot to gut out here.
Strictly speaking, "Sonic Team" only existed for the original Sonic in 1991, then it effectively disbanded, coming back together as its own "thing" with the release of NiGHTS.
That is to say, it is not responsible for Sonic 2, CD or 3. It retroactively gained these titles (mostly because key members of the original Sonic Team worked on these titles) but they weren't "Sonic Team" inventions. Shocking and controversial I know.
File:Edge UK 089.pdf, page 70 onwards. Sega Retro needs to reflect this information.
-Black Squirrel (talk) 14:13, 13 December 2015 (CST)