The History of Sonic the Hedgehog is a book by Udon Pix n Love Editions. It's a large size, hard cover book with 300 pages. It's heavy, with good quality paper, & comes wrapped in plastic. You can get it from Amazon (who may sometimes ship it free, despite its heavy weight) with the button in this entry! At right is the blurb on the back cover to read.
Above is the table of contents...where you can see there's lots of content! At left are 2 examples of the inside pages. They have some nice CG character models (top is a height chart, & big is the tallest...but did you know Vector is taller than Eggman?)
The interior to the hard covers/interior 1st pages have some fun classic line art you can see to the left. Then, here are 2 example pages. The first shows merchandise like dolls & Sneakers (made by Nike, modeled after a Sonic shoe) the other page has an 'origin of Tails' paired with an old art of Eggbotnick.
The sort of hybrid 'eggbotnik' is where the art was beginning to resemble Robotnick (the all black eyes, etc) but still had the Eggman clothing. That art's not common, but did appear on a UK calendar so it's neat to see.
History of Sonic the Hedgehog Hardcover book
This is a hardcover, 300 page giant book of Sonic! This isn't an Archie thing either, it's actual games & facts and history. You can see the size at left, compared with game & CD.
Amazon Says: "Celebrating over 20 years as SEGA's official mascot, The History of Sonic the Hedgehog is the ultimate guide to SEGA's spiky blue speedster! This hefty 300-page hardcover volume covers in detail every 2D and 3D Sonic game, plus spinoffs and crossovers. You'll also find character profiles, promotional artwork, rare concept art, and a detailed look at the origins of the "Blue Blur"."
You can order this at Amazon, though it's expensive, at 31.00 because it is big. Discovered by Sonictoast.
"Visually, this book is amazing. Right off the get go, the inside covers have great classic artwork of Sonic and the gang. Every page is stunning with great collages of official SEGA artwork and 8-128 bit graphics from the video games. It is almost worth getting just for the pictures. But the content is amazing too.
It has a brief 8 page Sega history lesson before Sonic, another 6 pages of history about the creation of Sonic, then a full 83 pages covering Sonic's full history from 1991-2011. which includes interviews with Yuji Naka, Naoto Oshima and Takashi Iisuka. Then there is a profile for every Sonic Game. Every Spin-off and arcade and handheld. The games they do not include profiles for are the compilation games and games released in 2012 ("Sonic4 Ep.2" and "Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed"). They also don't include the 40+ Mobile phone Sonic games, but there is a page addressing the collection as a whole.
There is also Profiles for the modern cast of characters, including all three chaotix, all three babylon rogues and a lot of Sonic Adventure characters like Chaos, Tikal and E-102 Gamma. Strangely there is no profile for Omega. (Omega has a bigger part than E102 did so that's strange) Each profile also has a full list of every game that character has appeared in. The lists even includes "Sonic 4 Ep. 2" & "All-stars Racing Transformed".
The end has some cool concept art for a number of villains and badniks from the whole series. Then it finishes off with a lot of Cameos Sonic has made in other SEGA games. This is a great part because many of the screenshots and info they ripped straight from http://sonic.wikia.com/wiki/Sonic_Cameos a web page which is fan run/contributed Seriously, a lot (not all) of the screenshots used in this section of the book are the exact ones that I took from the games themselves and posted on this website.
However it is not perfect. There are a hand-full of errors. Some are forgivable like where they reference a level being from "Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games" when it was really from "Mario & Sonic at the Olympic WINTER Games". But then there are other things like showing 1994 Sonic Mcdonalds toys in a 2003 Sonic Happy Meal box or saying that "Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog" was a French series that debuted in 1995. We all know it's American and came out in 1993. Mario is also mentioned or referenced A LOT / Perhaps too much in the book as well, they really emphasize that Mario is the driving force that made Sonic what he is..."
Want to see the Special Gold Foil Exclusive Cover Version? (From France)
Review by Sonictoast * Further review pending
The Sonic X series of books. These appear to be a summary of an episode of the show that you can read. These are smaller then comic books, but about the same shape. They have nice glossy covers and pictures inside. Naturally, the words are big for easy readers. The books are around $4.00, one was mysteriously 3.99 the other 4.99 although they're the same size. Amazon.com will ship them to you if you can't get them in stores. There is a third one on the way "Aqua Planet by Charlotte Fullerton"